A Sibling's Love
by Mai Kusakabe
Summary: Thatch is dead, and Ace has gone to pursue his murderer despite Pops' bad feeling about it. Marco, not willing to lose anyone else, decides to accompany Ace. Meanwhile, the pirate Strawhat Luffy has entered the Grand Line.
1. Chapter 1

And here is the sequel to Children of the Sea. I'd wanted to write a story where Marco goes along with Ace to hunt for Blackbeard since forever, and I decided to do it in this verse because I love it and I don't want to stop playing with it yet. So here we have a longer fic with female Marco :) I hope you like it.

If anyone feels particularly like suffering, you should listen to Lindsey Stirling's cover of My Immortal during the third scene (you can find it on youtube). I used it to write the scene :D

As always, thanks a lot to KohanaTrustMe for all the help :D

* * *

 **Chapter 1**

The usual chatter over breakfast was broken by a loud and sudden exclamation, right before Second Division Commander Portgas D. Ace lunged out of the bench he had been sitting on to grab a wanted poster that had fallen out of the newspaper First Division Commander Marco had just opened.

Ace didn't bother to move from his sprawl on the mess hall's floor. He instead looked at the bounty poster and, to the bafflement of everybody present, burst out in peals of delighted laughter.

Thatch turned to look at Marco.

"He broke."

"Don't be an idiot," she scoffed, looking around until she spotted the still unopened newspaper in Izo's hands. Marco stretched a meaningful hand in his direction.

Izo spared one last glance at the still laughing Ace before he carefully opened his copy of the newspaper to pull out the poster. He didn't hand it over to Marco, though, and looked at it himself. He raised an eyebrow. The entire room's attention was on Izo.

"It's… nothing special. Just some rookie's bounty. Monkey D. Luffy… now why does that name sound familiar?"

Marco raised her eyebrows.

"Luffy, you say? Is he wearing a straw hat?"

"How did you know?" Izo asked, surprised.

Marco grinned.

"Because that's Ace's little brother."

"Yeah," Ace said, standing up with a wide grin, "and don't say it's nothing special. It hasn't even been a _month_ since he set sail, and that's East Blue." Ace paused for a moment, then his grin grew. "I'm gonna go show Pops," he announced before dashing out of the mess hall.

Marco shook her head in amusement.

" _How much_ is he worth?" she asked Izo, because Ace had taken off with the copy of the wanted poster that was technically hers.

Izo glanced back down at the bounty.

"Thirty million."

"On East Blue? I've got to agree with Ace. That _is_ promising. The average bounty there is about three million," Marco said.

"What did the kid do, anyway?" Thatch asked, leaning over Izo's shoulder to look at the poster.

"Being Ace's brother? He probably got into fights with half of East Blue's marines and most of the pirates," Izo joked, but handed the paper over to Thatch when Thatch made grabby hands at it.

Marco decided to look for the article about Luffy herself and finally looked down at her newspaper. As it turned out, Izo hadn't been off with his guess.

* * *

Being attacked by hopeful pirates was always a happy occurrence for the Whitebeard Pirates. It meant they got a chance to have some fun fighting _and_ in most cases acquired very much needed treasure. This time the Moby Dick was sailing alone when their opponents approached: they were a particularly large alliance of eager rookies that gave them a good hour worth of fighting before the crew could start scavenging the remaining enemy ships for anything worth salvaging. The fight could have lasted longer —and more enemy ships would have survived it— if Ace hadn't had so much energy to burn, but he had been brimming with it ever since he had seen his little brother's bounty that morning.

While there seemed to be a fair amount of treasure left for them, Thatch was certain that he had found the best part of it by far. He waited until everybody was back on board the Moby Dick before he showed off his discovery: a devil fruit. Whether he chose to eat it or not, it was an amazing thing to get his hands on. According to the crew's rules, the fruit was his to do as he chose: he could risk eating it and seeing what weird power it gave him, he could sell it and have a shit ton of money to spend for a long time, or maybe he could give it to some idiot who wanted to be a devil fruit user. As of now, he had no idea, but finding a devil fruit gave someone a considerable amount of boasting rights.

"So you're joining the hammer club?" Izo asked him.

Thatch shrugged.

"Maybe? I mean, I'd like to see if I can figure out what this thing does before I go and eat it."

"It doesn't give any clues," Ace said, leaning close to inspect the fruit. "Mine had these fire-like marks that said it had something to do with fire. What about yours, Marco?"

Thatch grinned, unable to hold back.

"Bet it looked like a chicken."

"Shut up or I'll shove that thing up your ass," Marco threatened him good-naturedly, which Thatch knew didn't mean she wouldn't follow through and use violence if she felt like it.

Thatch was in too good of a mood to heed the warning. He turned to Ace.

"Is she always this aggressive?" he asked in a fake whisper.

"Do you _really_ want me to answer that?" Ace asked with a mischievous smirk. "Because—"

"NO!" Thatch yelled in not-quite-faked horror. "Don't you _dare_!"

Ace and Marco started to laugh, and Izo sighed.

"You should know better by now," he muttered, patting Thatch on the shoulder.

" _They_ should know better," Thatch complained, pointing at them.

"Why? Your reactions are hilarious," Marco teased with a smirk, and wrapped an arm suggestively low around Ace's waist, leaning her head on his shoulder. Ace was still chuckling, but he slid a hand towards Marco's ass.

Thatch faked gagging.

"Okay, my fruit and me are off to have a chat with the pillow. You two go be gross elsewhere."

Marco blew him a kiss and Thatch flipped her off before disappearing through a door.

* * *

Something pounding on the door startled Ace awake. Next to him, Marco bolted upright on the bed.

"Marco! Ace! You gotta come to the deck!"

Ace didn't think, he jumped off the bed and grabbed his pants, putting them on as he hurried to the door. Marco slipped into her panties and grabbed her shirt off the floor. Any other time Ace might have commented on Marco leaving their cabin half-dressed, but nobody woke up two commanders in their crew like that unless it was an _emergency_. The fact that none of the guys outside even cracked a joke at Marco —still buttoning her shirt— when they stepped outside only put Ace's senses further on alert.

They ran down the hallway and out onto the deck, where Ace could see a large crowd gathered where the lights from the many windows didn't reach, though they had a few lamps with them. Marco and Ace ran in that direction, and the crowd parted to let them through.

There was a cleared space in the middle, where Izo was kneeling next to a fallen form. Ace could see a large pool of blood around and beneath the body, staining the white clothes. His eyes, however, strayed straight to the head, turned sideways so Ace could see the face despite the fact the body was laying on its— _his_ chest—

 _Thatch_.

Ace froze, staring at Thatch's face. Thatch looked surprised, shocked, as if he hadn't expected the attack —of course he hadn't, he had a stab wound on his back, and Thatch would _never_ turn his back to an opponent in a fight—

A thud at his left snapped Ace out of his daze, and he turned to see that Marco had dropped to her knees next to Thatch. She reached a hand out to touch Thatch's face, even though if was clear that he… the pool of blood wasn't growing, which meant he wasn't bleeding anymore, because his heart wasn't—

"I want a full sweep of the ship and everyone accounted for. Call the other ships too in case someone stayed with another division. Check our boats to see if any of them is missing. Whoever did this won't have stayed around to watch," Marco ordered, her voice a steady cold that rooted Ace to the present like nothing else could have.

Thatch lay dead on the floor — _stabbed to death by one of their own_ — and Marco knelt next to him, caressing Thatch's upturned cheek with her thumb while everybody scrambled to follow her orders. Marco's face was like a marble mask, and at that moment Ace had no doubt that if the killer hadn't left the ship yet their death would be at Marco's hands.

"Izo," Marco continued in a lower voice, "can you coordinate the reports? I want to go check Thatch's room. Nobody would have attacked a commander without a reason. And make sure someone moves Thatch out of here."

Izo nodded somberly from his place on the other side of Thatch.

Marco glanced down at Thatch one last time before standing up. She brushed past Ace and pushed through the remaining crowd to leave the scene.

Ace turned to Izo to ask what he could do —anything, anything at all to stop himself from thinking how this _couldn't be happening_ , because they had been joking only a few hours ago and everything had been _fine_ then— and Izo fixed him with a determined look that wasn't diminished at all by the moisture gathering in his eyes.

"Go with her," he said, and Ace didn't need to be told twice.

He turned around again and moved through the thinning and openly sobbing crowd to go to the door. He froze halfway across the deck when he saw Pops walk through the same door that Ace was headed for. Their eyes met, and Ace had never before seen Pops look so grim and ashen. Pops nodded towards the door after a long moment, and Ace guessed it made sense that he had crossed paths with Marco. And yet she wasn't with Pops, which must mean that she had brushed him aside to go do as she had said.

Ace looked one last time at Pops before they both started moving again, and he ran down the hallways all the way to Thatch's cabin. The door was open, and he found Marco standing motionless in the middle of it.

"The devil fruit isn't here," she said as soon as Ace barreled into the room. "It wasn't outside either, so it's safe to assume—" her voice cut off when Ace wrapped his arms around her from behind.

"You can cry, you know? It'll be hours before we know who did this," Ace mumbled against her neck. It was odd to be the reasonable one, the one who kept his cool when all he wanted to do was rage and burn down whoever had done this, whoever had _dared_ … But Ace had known Thatch for two years, while Marco… Marco had known Thatch for longer than Ace had been alive, and yet here she was, being ruthlessly efficient and not stopping to _feel_ at all.

"I… I can't. Not now, Ace. If I do, then everybody else should, too, and we can't afford that now. We need to discover who did this."

"But everybody else _is_ crying," Ace whispered, and he pressed his face against Marco's neck, letting her feel how wet his cheeks were. "We can do both."

Marco dropped in his arms. There was no other way to describe it. She sagged and the only reason she was standing was that Ace still had his arms around her. She let out a broken sob and clutched Ace's forearms with her hands. Ace was careful to fall on his knees without letting go of her, and they clung to each other and cried in the middle of the floor in Thatch's bedroom.

* * *

They only stopped at their own bedroom so that Marco could put on a pair of shorts before heading back to the deck. Thatch's body was nowhere on sight, but the large bloodstain —now far more noticeable in the increasing light of dawn— made it impossible to pretend nothing had happened. Marco took a deep breath and steadied herself before approaching Pops. Neither of them asked the other how they were feeling, because the answer was obvious in the deep creases around Pops' eyes and the dried tear tracks that Marco could still feel on her cheeks. Instead, Marco told him about the missing devil fruit and Pops nodded at the news.

"Jozu and Vista are canvassing the ship to make sure we haven't missed anyone in our search, and we have received news from two of our ships informing that they aren't missing anyone. We should know who did this in an hour or two at most."

Marco nodded. She walked up to Pops' chair and jumped on the right armrest. They couldn't stop to grieve properly, not yet, but she could offer her silent support while they waited. She knew how Pops was feeling, she knew how hard he was trying _not_ to think about how he was feeling. Thatch had joined the crew at a really young age, when they were but a small group of misfits and they… they had basically raised him.

Marco couldn't afford to think about it. Not now.

She had to stay strong for when the news came, someone had. It fell down to them.

* * *

Marco stared at the quickly diminishing dot that was the Striker.

Ace had lost it when they had learned that Teach and one of their boats were missing. Marco had, too, if she was being perfectly honest —how long had Teach been with them? Since Roger's days, and yet…— but then Pops had said that he had a bad feeling about this, and one didn't survive in the Grand Line, much less the New World, for as long as they had without developing good instincts. Marco's own gut agreed with Pops' words, and yet the notion of letting Teach get away with this was jarring. But then Ace had refused to listen to Pops and had left anyway, and Marco…

The Striker was no longer visible on the horizon.

"…Pops," Marco called, cutting through the worried and anxious words of her siblings. The deck fell silent, "I'm sorry, but I'm going to disobey you as well."

"Marco?" Jozu asked, puzzled, but Marco ignored him and turned to meet Pops' eyes.

"You say you have a bad feeling about this, and I have to agree," she continued, "but I'm not going to wait here and hope you're wrong."

Pops stared at her for a long moment before he nodded.

"You should go pack a bag, then."

* * *

Ace was fuming.

He understood that the crew trusted Pops' gut feelings, he really did, but he couldn't believe that they were going to let Teach get away with killing Thatch just like that. _No fucking way_. He would kill Teach himself even if he had to chase him all across the Grand Line first. He would make sure Thatch's death was avenged.

A shadow appeared above him on the sea rushing by the sides of the Striker, and he looked up to see Marco flying above.

"I'm not going back!" he yelled at her, angry that she had followed him.

"I know!" she replied, coming down to fly closer to him. "Slow down! I'm coming with you!"

"What?" Ace muttered, surprised, but he did slow down. They had figured out long ago that while Marco was the only person who could ride on the Striker with him —being immune to fire and all that— there was a limit to the speed that it was safe for her to land on it without the boat capsizing on them. Ace wouldn't put it past her to drop on it anyway if he refused to comply.

Marco landed on the small space before the seat, transforming as she fell. She had a bag slung over her left shoulder, and looked annoyed but determined.

"I thought you were trying to stop me a moment ago?" Ace asked, puzzled by her change of heart.

"Yes, but you won't listen, and you heard Pops. I'd rather come with you and make sure his bad feeling doesn't come true than risking…" she paused. "Besides, I _want_ to kill Teach, too."

Ace smiled weakly at her, understanding what she hadn't said and unable to feel bothered by her concern after what had happened. He held the New World log pose to her.

"You should take this, then. You're a far better navigator than me."

She took the log pose from around his wrist and secured it around hers.

"And my map? I know you took it, it wasn't on the desk when I packed."

Ace shrugged, unapologetic. Marco's maps were _good_ , and he had needed a way to figure out where Teach might have gone. He bent down to search through his bag and gave the map to her.

Marco turned around, her back to Ace, and rested against his chest before unfurling the map. Ace wrapped an arm around her waist and kept his eyes on the sea. It was a little cramped for two people on the Striker, but they could manage it, and Ace really appreciated that Marco had come with him.

 **To be continued**

* * *

A little bit on the timeline. I know at least some of the translations of Drum say the Blackbeard Pirates attacked the island a few months before Luffy shows up (I don't know what the raw says, it's one of those things I always say I'll check but never do), but we have some other canon info that contradicts it: we saw in the Ace and WB flashback that Ace left right after Thatch's murder (he was too enraged to have had much time to process it), and when Whitebeard first saw Luffy he remembered Ace showing him Luffy's first wanted poster. This means that Thatch died sometime after Luffy's first wanted poster came out. Because we don't have much time between that happening and Luffy reaching Drum (three weeks is the most generous estimation I can make with the information we have in the manga) I decided to have both events happen the same day.

Some of you may be wondering how come Teach didn't know Luffy was Ace's brother after that scene at the mess hall: it's simple, he just wasn't there. While he heard word that Ace's little brother had a bounty, he didn't get to see the poster or care enough to ask for the name. Most of the crew have heard Luffy's name at least once, some of them often enough to find it familiar —like Izo did— but the only person who's heard enough about Luffy to recognize him immediately is Marco.

As you may have noticed, I haven't really followed the anime additions for Thatch's death. I know they're there, but I haven't watched it in forever and I don't remember which episode it was, so I'm using only the manga. I think I got the fact that Thatch was laying face down with a stab wound right from the anime, but I'm not sure.


	2. Chapter 2

Okay, so here I am with chapter 2 :) I had this one written even before I started posting, and 3 is almost done (pending some revisions and tweaking), so it shouldn't take too long.

Thank you so much for the reviews :D

* * *

 **Chapter 2**

Ace and Marco spent most of the time in silence, save for their short discussion of the most likely island that Teach would have headed to. It was probably for the best, because, given both their moods, Ace wouldn't have been surprised if they had ended up arguing had they tried to have a conversation.

They agreed that it was unlikely for Teach to have gone to one of the crew's territories, because Teach didn't know how long it would take for the crew to discover what he had done, and he couldn't know how long it would take him to get away from one of their islands if he had to flee again. On many of them, the locals _would_ try to stop him if they learned of what he had done. Thus, Ace and Marco decided to head for the nearest island that wasn't part of their territories: a small place that barely fit a town just on the edge of the Calm Belt. The island wasn't part of any of the other Yonko's territories either, and their presence there wouldn't cause any trouble with them. Truthfully, Ace knew neither he nor Marco would have cared if that island _had_ been under the protection of another Yonko.

As soon as they set foot at the port, Marco stopped and closed her eyes in concentration.

"He isn't here," she said after nearly a minute.

"You mean we got the wrong island?" Ace asked, and surprised himself by how hard it was not to growl the words.

"Not necessarily. He has a few hours on us, he could have left. Let's ask around."

Ace nodded and marched off to the nearest bar. As much as it angered him to admit it, he and Teach had some things in common, and their appetite was one of them. Ace was starving after the trip, which meant it was likely Teach had been, too. Even if he hadn't stuck around to eat anywhere, he would at the very least have bought food, and certainly enough of it to be remembered after only a few hours.

There were many advantages about being such recognizable members of the Whitebeard Pirates, one of them that nobody was inclined to lie to them. Especially not when they asked their questions in as brusque a manner as they did here. Ace didn't have the energy or inclination to even fake his usual friendly behavior, and it seemed that neither did Marco.

They didn't learn anything in the first three bars, but the bartender of the fourth remembered a guy that had come in very early that morning asking to buy a massive amount of food. He fit Teach's description, when Marco gave it, and the bartender also remembered that the guy had asked if there was any ship heading for West Blue at the time.

"We're a small town, you see, but a lot of the ships that want to cross the Calm Belt stop here. He seemed to be in a hurry, so I told him to go ask around the port," the bartender explained, and Ace was halfway to the door before he was done.

* * *

Two hours later, they found a woman who remembered a ship that had left for West Blue sometime after dawn, but she didn't know where it had been headed. She did, however, remember seeing Teach speak to the captain.

"They seemed to be bartering, but don't ask me what about, I got no idea. Saw him board the ship. He had this _huge_ bag with him."

"He's gone to _West Blue_?" Ace hissed the moment they were out of earshot from the woman.

Marco shrugged. It _was_ a reasonable move. Staying in the New World meant staying close to the Whitebeard Pirates and all of their allies. Teach was probably trying to disappear from their radar.

She looked up at the reddish sky of sunset.

"We'll need a map of that sea. Let's go see if we can find one, and then somewhere to spend the night."

"We're not _spending the night_ anywhere, Marco," Ace growled at her. "As soon as we get that map, we're crossing the Calm Belt."

Marco sighed, completely unsurprised by Ace's refusal. And yet, she really didn't have the patience to deal with his stubbornness right now.

"Ace," she started, summoning as much calm as she could manage, "crossing the Calm Belt will take us nearly a full day on the Striker. You need to rest."

"I don't need to rest," Ace snapped. "I need to catch Teach as soon as possible and _kill him_!"

Marco hurried two steps forward, whirled around, and cut Ace's path with a glare, her hands clenched by her sides.

"You barely slept last night. You fell asleep twice on our way here, and once more while we asked around. You _need_ to sleep, or we'll be stranded in the middle of the Calm Belt while you take a fucking nap." Ace opened his mouth to argue, but Marco didn't let him. " _Besides_ , as much as I want to kill Teach, it's very unlikely we'll catch him quickly when we don't even know where in West Blue he was headed. We can't be so reckless, Ace, or you'll be dead on your feet by the time we have to fight."

Marco saw Ace's mental struggle through the emotions crossing his face. He wanted to argue and just charge towards the Calm Belt, but he also saw that Marco had a point. Eventually, Ace nodded curtly, his mouth pulled down in distaste.

"Lead the way, then."

Marco nodded back and turned around. She stopped a passerby to ask where they could find maps.

* * *

Marco did not sleep that night. Despite his original reluctance, Ace had passed out the moment his head had touched the pillow, but Marco… she doubted she would sleep. She could go on without sleeping for weeks thanks to her power, she wasn't tired at all, and while falling asleep was usually easy (it was a routine for her, after all), Marco knew she would struggle with it if she tried.

So she didn't try.

Along with the West Blue map, Marco had bought a few navigation tools for that sea (she hadn't expected to leave the New World and hadn't brought any of her own), a case of pencils, and a notebook.

By the time Ace woke up, she had managed to draw two sketches of a reasonable likeness to Teach. They had cost seven snapped pencils and half the sheets in the notebook shredded to pieces, but she had eventually reigned her temper in enough to get the drawings done. They would be a good help for their search.

"What's that?" Ace asked from the bed, in a subdued voice that didn't fit him at all. Marco had heard him as he tried not to wake up, and she had decided to give him some time.

Marco raised one of the drawings and showed it to Ace.

"…Oh. That's—that's a good idea," Ace acknowledged. He then looked around. "You haven't slept." It wasn't a question.

"I'm not sure I can," Marco admitted. She pushed away from the desk and stood up. "But it's fine, I don't _need_ to sleep, not so soon anyway."

Fortunately, Ace didn't push the issue or try to argue that he hadn't needed to sleep, either. He just nodded and sat on the edge of the bed.

"Let's go get some breakfast and head for the Calm Belt," he said, reaching for his boots.

"We'll need some provisions, too. It's a long trip."

Marco folded the drawings and stuffed them in a pocket of her bag. She then picked the West Blue map she had been studying whenever she needed to calm down from the effort of remembering Teach's face. She had located the closest island easily enough, but navigating the Calm Belt would be a tricky affair. They would have to rely on the log pose while they were close enough to the Grand Line for the islands' magnetic fields to affect a normal compass, then switch to the conventional tools once they had moved far enough.

"We'll probably have to fight a handful of sea kings," Marco commented, lifting her bag. "The Striker may not need wind to sail, but we don't have the seastone covering its bottom that protects most ships from being noticed by sea kings."

"Good," Ace said, finally standing up. "I think both of us could use a fight or two."

"Yes, we really could."

* * *

Ace thought that crossing the Calm Belt was a good experience for them. He felt some of the tension that had gathered on his back dissipate after scorching a few of the giant sea kings that inhabited the Calm Belt, and Marco seemed more relaxed after beating up a few of them herself.

Ace wouldn't go so far as to say they were in a good mood, neither of them were, but at least by the time they reached an area of sea with waves they could exchange words without snapping at each other. And, while he wouldn't say it, Ace admitted that Marco had been right when she insisted on spending the night at the previous island. It was almost dark by the time they reached West Blue, and after the fighting and powering the Striker the entire day Ace felt tired. He had fallen asleep once, and according to Marco their small boat had been attacked by five separate sea kings in the time that it had taken Ace to wake up.

"How far are we?" Ace asked, careful to follow Marco's directions. He rested his chin on her shoulder to look at the map she was holding. Marco's blue fire illuminated it, and it was a good thing her fire didn't burn because Marco had both hands occupied and the fire was in contact with the paper.

"Maybe half an hour. This island is very close to the Calm Belt."

Ace hummed.

"You know, after all that blue sky and still sea, I was half-expecting to come out into a storm or something, but things are pretty quiet around here."

"Oh, shut up," Marco told him, but she didn't sound angry. "A storm is the last thing we need. This thing would be useless," she gestured vaguely down at the Striker.

* * *

They asked around, and nobody recognized Teach in any of the hotels, bars, or restaurants at the port town. Marco hadn't sensed his presence anywhere in the island (which wasn't much larger than the previous one and thus she could sense around the whole place), but she had hoped that someone had at least seen him.

Frustrated, Marco convinced Ace to rent a room at the last hotel they visited and sleep for the night, while she went out to the bars again to try to learn anything that could help them. Ace gave her a worried look, but he didn't argue over her skipping sleep a second night.

"I'm leaving this here," she said, placing her bag on one of the nightstands. She removed the New World log pose from around her wrist and put it in one of the inner pockets of the bag.

Twenty minutes later found Marco sitting on a stool in a reasonably full bar, a beer in hand while she tried to talk to the girl behind the bar. Marco's attempts to ask her questions were interrupted a few times by clients shouting orders, but the girl came back to where Marco sat every time (she probably found a lone woman to be preferable company to any of the many drunk men around; Marco would have, back in the day), and Marco finally managed to ask what she needed.

"Islands where ships that come from the Grand Line stop?" the girl asked, surprised. "But… West Blue crosses into the second half of the Grand Line, you know?"

"I'm aware," Marco replied vaguely.

The girl opened her mouth, but she was called from across the bar and had to leave.

"You want to go to the Grand Line?" asked one of the men that were close to Marco. He had a drink in his hand, but he didn't even slur, which meant he probably hadn't arrived much earlier than Marco. He grinned and approached her. "You don't need one of those lousy ships to do that, sweetheart."

 _Sweetheart_? Nobody had called her that in… years, really.

"That's not what I'm interested in," Marco replied, putting as much disinterest in her voice as she could manage. She saw the barmaid looking at them from a few feet away, but the girl didn't approach. Marco identified the worried expression on her face.

"No? Because I'm taking my crew to the Grand Line, and if you wanted to come, we'd be all _very_ happy to let you tag along," the man insisted, leaning closer to Marco.

Marco moved as far from him on her stool as she could and a realization came to her: he did not recognize her (no one had, now that she thought about it: there had been no surprised or scared stares). Usually, while some people ogled her despite knowing who she was, very few dared to approach her, and _no one_ had leered at her the way this man was doing in a very long time.

Here, sitting at a poorly lit bar in a tiny island outside the Grand Line where no one seemed to know who she was, with an entitled asshole far too close into her personal space, Marco remembered being the sixteen year old first mate of a tiny pirate crew who got propositioned every time her captain mentioned his dream.

She looked the man up and down.

"You're a pirate?"

He grinned, obviously not noticing the disdain in her voice and on her face.

 _An entitled asshole all right_ , she thought in annoyance.

"With a bounty and everything. You haven't seen it?" he sounded both surprised and as if he was trying to cover how offended he felt with faked courtesy. It would almost be cute if it wasn't so pathetic.

"Afraid not."

"Fifteen million," he announced proudly, and Marco couldn't have held back her snort for all the money in the world.

 _What percentage of_ my _bounty is that?_ She thought in amusement.

He didn't find it so amusing. His demeanor changed completely. His attempt at flirtation and charm was replaced by a snarl as he reared a hand back.

"What's so funny, bitch?!"

Marco could have just stopped his hand, she could have flipped him on the ground or the bar, or maybe thrown him against a nearby table, even just dislocated his shoulder. She didn't. Instead, Marco reached out, grabbed the wrist of the fist aimed at her face, and _twisted_. She both felt and heard the bone break clean from the rest of his arm, flesh and muscle ripping around it. Marco was impressed by how the man managed to muffle his scream, even if to do so he had to bite so hard the inside of his mouth that blood started to trickle out of it. Only a pitiful, pained whimper escaped him.

Marco let go of his wrist and he staggered back.

Not many people noticed the incident in the din of the bar, but the man's companions —his crew, no doubt— hurried over and stared in horror when they saw what had happened exactly. Marco would bet he was the captain, with a bounty like that out here. The man's damaged hand was dangling limply at the end of his arm, covered in blood that slowly dripped to the floor, and he was trying to hold it with his other hand. It wouldn't matter, it was almost guaranteed that he would lose that hand.

"Leave," Marco told the crew coldly as soon as the first few turned to look at her.

They didn't need to be told twice.

Marco turned on her stool, back to her drink, and noticed that the barmaid was still staring, her hands now covering her mouth and her eyes blown wide. Marco felt a trickle of embarrassment over the scene.

"Sorry about that," she said, and managed a weak smile. She reached for the paper napkins to try to wipe off the blood that had splattered her hand. "I think I'd better leave."

The barmaid lowered her hands and shook her head.

"N-No, there's no need." She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. "You wanted to know about those islands, right? I could write you a list of the ones I know of."

"Thank you," Marco said. She put the napkins to the side once she had cleaned as much as she could, raised her mug to her mouth with her other hand, and resolved to leave a very large tip.

 **To be continued**

* * *

Some of you may be wondering about the trip to West Blue. Here's my reasoning:

I've been thinking a lot about how Teach managed to go all the way from the New World to Drum in around three weeks, because I don't believe for a second that he could've crossed that distance in either the boat he stole or that raft his crew used pre-timeskip. Then I remembered something: when Lafitte showed up at Mariejois, Tsuru identified him as a former policeman from West Blue with a horrible reputation (the fact that SHE knew him on sight tells us just how horrible that was), and I realized that the Calm Belt separates West Blue from the New World. If Teach had crossed it, and then relatively quickly headed for Reverse Mountain, it could explain that he made it to Drum before the Strawhats (assuming that Drum really isn't in the Strawhats' original route and they reached it by accident in their desperate search for a doctor).

More explanations on my theories of the routes and everything as we advance. I don't want to spoil the plot :)

Remember to comment before you go ^^


	3. Chapter 3

I'm done overanalyzing the timelines. Reading through the manga, it's so painfully obvious that Oda hadn't thought about when exactly Thatch died by the time the Strawhats visited Drum… Admittedly, by then Oda expected One Piece to last at most 10 years, so he clearly didn't think he'd have much time to expand on the Whitebeard Pirates (that said, I may have created an extremely exhaustive timeline of canon events to adapt this story accordingly… You know, when to show X happened, when to make Y reference, have things fit… ehem)

Thanks a lot for all your reviews :)

* * *

 **Chapter 3**

 _Thatch unceremoniously dropped down next to Marco in the calm corner of deck she had claimed as her own to draw._

" _You're a woman," he said._

 _Marco raised her eyebrows, but didn't look up from her draft._

" _As far as I'm aware, I am," she said, keeping the sarcasm to a lower register than she would have expected._

 _Thatch scoffed._

" _Okay, that was dumb. Sorry. It's just… I need advice."_

" _From a woman," Marco surmised, less sarcastically._

" _Yeah."_

 _Noticing the chagrined note in Thatch's voice, Marco finally capped her pencil and looked at him. Thatch was sprawled on the floor in all his gangly teenager glory, and had a massive pout ("not a pout," he insisted every time) on his face._

" _What is it?"_

 _Thatch bit his bottom lip in that gesture that indicated he was embarrassed about whatever he was about to say or do next._

" _What do girls like?"_

 _Marco blinked slowly in confusion, staring at Thatch's sullen face._

" _That's a very general question. 'Girls' are people, each has her own tastes. Why do you ask?"_

 _Thatch hesitated long enough that Marco expected him to shrug the subject off and just leave. It wouldn't be the first time he did it. He didn't._

" _You remember the last island we were on? I saw this really cute girl, and I wanted to take her out to eat something and chat a little. Maybe…" he blushed to the tips of his ears and Marco bit back a tease, because he was having enough trouble speaking as it was, "maybe kiss her or something if she was up to it. But she called me a creep when I talked to her and threatened to call the cops on me. Not that I mind fighting cops or marines, but that's not what I wanted!" he hurried to add, flustered._

 _Marco hummed thoughtfully._

" _What did you tell her?"_

" _Well… I don't really know how to talk to women —you don't count, you're my_ sister _, ewww— so I've been watching the guys, and—"_

 _Marco burst out laughing, cutting off Thatch's words._

" _OI!" he yelled, offended._

" _Sorry, sorry," Marco managed between chuckles, patting him on the head. She took a deep breath. "I'm not laughing at you— well, I kind of_ am _, but not like that. It's just… I'm going to assume this girl wasn't in one of the bars we go to, was she?"_

" _No. I'd gone to buy supplies."_

" _I thought so. Well, bar methods just won't do, so forget all about them," Marco told him._

" _They work on you," Thatch pointed out, then he grimaced. "I've seen you go with plenty of guys." He said it like thinking about it pained him, and Marco had to hold back another fit of laughter._

" _If you'd paid closer attention—" Thatch mimed gagging, and Marco swatted him on the head. "_ If you'd paid closer attention _," she insisted, "you would've seen I don't go with guys who act like most of our crew does at those places. But that's beside the point. The point is that those methods work there because most of the women who frequent those bars are working."_

" _Working?_ Oh _!" Thatch blushed again and Marco chuckled._

" _Yes, oh. Not all of them, that's true, but the other ones are either pirates like me, or locals who want to have fun with absolutely no strings attached or want to try sleeping with a pirate. They are generally there looking for sex, nothing else, and aren't so picky about their partner's attitude as long as they're not absolute assholes. Also, alcohol tends to distort one's judgment and lower their standards."_

 _Thatch remained silent for a long moment._

" _I fucked up, didn't I?" he asked finally._

" _Horribly."_

" _Okay, so what_ should _I do next time?"_

* * *

Marco returned to the hotel room with the list of islands, and marked them all in the map. She planned the quickest route to cover them all —and maybe add a few more if they learned of them before they found Teach's trail— keeping in mind that she couldn't know which of these islands Teach had reached.

When that was done —nearing dawn— she went to take a shower, dressed in clean clothes, and sat on the bed. She looked down at Ace. She felt a little bit like a creep for staring at him while he slept, but it was calming, in a way. A reminder that life went on, and she had reasons to stay focused. Once she had left the bar a few hours ago, Marco had realized just how disproportionate her reaction had been, and it worried her. Marco hadn't lost her temper like that over such a small thing as a creep since her teenage years, and yet she had crippled for life a man who couldn't have even grazed her no matter how hard he had tried.

Marco reached out with a hand and brushed her fingers over Ace's hair. They really had been on edge these past two days, she was surprised they hadn't come to blows at some point, and that couldn't continue.

Thatch was dead, and she… well, she couldn't accept it, not yet; she couldn't mourn him properly yet, but she had to control her temper better. It wasn't Ace's fault, and he didn't deserve to have Marco growling at him and ordering him around at every turn.

Marco brushed her thumb behind Ace's ear and he sighed. She bent over and kissed him on the forehead, then trailed her lips down the side of his face, over his cheek, stopped to mouth at his jaw. Ace stirred when Marco reached his neck.

"Wh—" he started, but yawned, "what're you doing?"

"I'm sorry," Marco said, straightening again.

Ace blinked up at her.

"'Bout what?"

"I've been an ass to you."

It took Ace's sleep-addled brain a moment to catch up. He moved to lie on his back.

"Yeah, well, so have I."

"We've been a pair of assholes," Marco admitted, trying to smile. She wasn't very successful. "We really should stop. We're in this together."

Ace hummed an agreement. He then grabbed her by the arm and pulled her down on his chest.

"What brought this on?" Ace asked.

Marco hesitated. Ace was used to her being calm, reasonable, and generally composed. But this was also a side of her, one that rarely saw the light of day nowadays, but that was still there. One that, Marco realized, would be around for some time now.

"I pretty much ripped a guy's hand off last night. It was a disproportionate reaction, he was just being your average pirate rookie jerk."

" _To you_?" Ace asked, surprised.

Marco chuckled.

"Yeah, to me. That's something I learned yesterday: it seems no one recognized me. We should pay attention to how people look at us. Seeing two commanders of the Whitebeard Pirates out here should cause some level of panic, but there's been none. If we're anonymous…"

"It could be useful," Ace finished for her, realization in his voice.

"Exactly."

"Did you get anything else?"

"I have a list of islands we can try looking for information on Teach. He's likely already moved on from whatever island he reached, but we should be able to find his trail eventually."

Ace had tensed when Marco said that Teach had likely moved on, but she felt how he clearly forced himself to relax.

"Okay."

Marco sat up.

"Go take a shower before we go buy breakfast. You stink," she ordered, trying to joke, and was rewarded with a weak grimace and a rude gesture.

* * *

They ate breakfast and resupplied before leaving the island. An advantage to stable seasons was that they didn't have to worry about sudden changes in temperature. It was late May, and as such their summer clothes didn't stand out amongst the population. They had both packed light, trying to fit as much as possible in their small bags, and so neither of them had brought any of the winter clothes they used to blend in at the colder islands.

The Striker could move faster than an average ship when Ace put it to full power, and they reached the next island on Marco's planned route just past lunchtime. This island was a larger one, which meant Marco couldn't sense over the entire place from a single spot. They sailed around it once, so that she could try to scan as much of the area as possible in a short time, and she determined that Teach wasn't here either.

There were two towns at the island, and Ace left Marco at the western one while he headed for the eastern one himself, in an attempt to shorten the time it would take them to ask around.

Ace entered every business he came across and stopped random passersby to show the sketch of Teach's face, but nobody recognized him. He also did as Marco had said and tried to pay attention to the people around him. She had been right: nobody seemed to recognize his face or the large flag tattooed on his back.

This was good, it meant that word wouldn't get out about the Whitebeard Pirates being on West Blue. Teach wouldn't know they had followed him here.

* * *

A day later, on the third island they reached in West Blue, they got lucky. Teach had been spotted here. In fact, many people remembered him because he had been seen talking with a man who had quite the reputation for being a monster around these parts: his name was Lafitte, and he was a former policeman from a nearby island who was known for terrorizing the place before he had to flee after the marines sent a large force to arrest him. There had been another man with them, described as a very large and muscular guy, but nobody seemed to know who he was. They heard more than once that he was _loud_ , though.

"I heard they bought a log pose," the man Marco and Ace were talking to said. "Good riddance if they're going to that goddamn place." He took a long gulp of the drink Ace had bought him in an effort to get him to talk.

"You mean they're going to the Grand Line?" Marco asked, leaning forward. She had her arms crossed close to her body on the tabletop, so that her cleavage didn't hide much. It was a cheap trick, but it tended to work.

The man grinned, looking down at her.

"Yeah. They were pretty loud about it and everything. Heard Lafitte assure this dude of yours that he's quite the navigator."

* * *

"He's going to the Grand Line?" Ace hissed once they were out of the bar. "I thought he was trying to _hide_."

Marco sighed and put a hand on his arm. She didn't like the sound of this any more than he did, but it seemed obvious now that they had been wrong in their original assessment.

"If you think about it, it does make some sense. Why would Teach take such a risk to steal that devil fruit only to hide for the rest of his life?"

"It's ridiculous! He can't really expect we'll let him gallivant around the Grand Line without repercussions."

"No, but he likely thinks he has time until we hear he's in Paradise. If we hadn't discovered he crossed to West Blue, we would be scouring the New World for him," Marco pointed out.

"Still doesn't make a lick of sense," Ace grumbled.

Marco shrugged. Ace was right, of course. She couldn't fathom what was going on in Teach's head to make him think he could somehow survive for long after what he had done. Teach had no way of knowing about Pops' bad feeling and the original order to let him go.

"It doesn't matter," she said finally, "we'll get him."

Ace nodded.

"So now what? We get a Paradise log pose and hunt him all over the Grand Line?"

"If we have to," Marco said. "If we're lucky, he will not have crossed to the Grand Line yet. In that case we only have to wait for him at the Twin Cape and we'll be done."

"Right. We can ask Crocus if he's been there," Ace said, then backtracked. "Do you even know who Crocus is? He's—"

Marco interrupted him with a chuckle.

"Yes, I've known Crocus for a long time. He's been at the Cape for over fifty years."

"…Oh. Didn't know he was _that_ old."

Marco laughed.

"Come on, let's go find a log pose. We really didn't pack well for this trip."

* * *

This island was one of the closest to the Reverse Mountain in West Blue, and it was easy to find shops that catered to those preparing to cross to the Grand Line. Log poses, however, were hard to come across outside the Grand Line, and they had to visit four shops before they found one.

" _Fifty thousand belis_?" Marco demanded, outraged. "Are you out of your fucking mind?" she asked the shopkeeper, leaning forward to glare at him.

A disadvantage of not being recognized was that people didn't realize the danger they were in when Marco glared at them. It was in situations like this one when Marco resented how unintimidating her appearance was. Not even Ace looked like anything special compared to all the towering pirates that prowled the seas.

The shopkeeper shrugged.

"That's the price, love. You can take it or go elsewhere, but don't think you'll find it cheaper." He jabbed a finger at the log pose in the display cabinet. "These things are hard to find around these parts."

Marco was about to give this shopkeeper a piece of her mind accompanied by a handful of choice threats —that was _five times_ the average price in the Grand Line— when Ace grabbed her by the upper arm and tugged. She was annoyed, but let him pull her away from the counter.

"He won't give in," Ace said in a hushed voice. "There's a lot of people after log poses and he knows. That's about what I had to pay for mine."

Marco frowned.

"I can't _believe_ I forgot to pack a damned Paradise log pose," she muttered.

Unfortunately, Ace had a point. Given how many shops they had visited to find a single log pose, and the amount of hopeful rookies heading for the Grand Line every year, this shopkeeper really had no reason to bargain unless Marco decided to explain to him in great detail why it was a bad idea to attempt to swindle the Whitebeard Pirates. She couldn't risk it and let their presence in this sea be known if Teach was still here, and they didn't have the time to waste looking for a cheaper log pose somewhere else. One that might not even exist.

Marco sighed.

 _Damn Blue Seas_ , she thought to herself, turning around and marching over to the counter.

"Okay, we'll take it," she growled, and held back an insult when the shopkeeper smiled smugly.

She opened her bag, pulled out her wallet, and looked at its contents. A measly ten thousand belis bill and some coins.

 _Oh, damn._

"Ace, give me your wallet," she said, reaching out with her free hand.

Ace handed it over with a worried expression, and Marco opened it. Two ten thousand belis bills and a handful of coins that in no way amounted to twenty thousand belis when added to her own coins.

"You don't have the money," the shopkeeper realized before Marco could say anything. "You made all this fuss and you don't even have the money," he accused her, indignant.

Marco ignored him, looking down at her bag. They didn't have the money, no, but maybe…

"What about an exchange?" she asked, distractedly handing Ace back his wallet.

"An exchange?" the shopkeeper asked with a sneer. "I doubt you have anything worth this beau—" He froze when Marco pulled out her New World log pose, his eyes going wide.

"I don't?" she asked mockingly, raising her eyebrows.

"Where…? Is that the real thing?!" he demanded, lunging forward.

Marco took a step back and out of his reach.

"It is. So…" she wiggled her log pose, "what do you say? Does this cover the price?"

"Let me see that," the shopkeeper demanded again, and Marco handed it over. It was amusing to watch as he inspected the log pose like someone looking over a treasure. Then again, Marco suspected not many of those made their way out of the Grand Line, and even less of them left their owners' hands. But she had no choice here; they would simply have to get a new one at Sabaody or Fishman Island once they returned home.

"Well?" Marco asked after a full minute.

"Eh… yes, of course, take the damn thing," the shopkeeper said, distractedly opening the glass cabinet for her. Marco guessed he was too busy thinking how much a collector out here would pay for a New World log pose to pay them any attention.

* * *

"We need money," Marco said as soon as they were outside the shop, log pose firmly secured around her wrist. "I hadn't noticed we were so short on funds."

"So what do we do? Assault the first pirate ship we see?" Ace asked, grinning.

Marco grinned back.

"Sounds about right to me."

 **To be continued**

* * *

Okay, first of all, I have to confess a certain level of evil glee at the idea of having men use pet names with Marco in that dismissive way many so often do to try to set themselves above a woman. Now imagine this shopkeeper and the guy from the bar in last chapter: at some point, some day, there will be a newspaper article with a nice, large picture of Marco, or maybe they'll just see her wanted poster somewhere, and they'll realize just how close they were to death. I assure you these two won't use pet names with that intent ever again.

I've thought many times about how Blackbeard managed to assemble such a strong crew (for Paradise's standards) in such a short time. Here, I've decided that Lafitte and Burgess were already traveling together by the time Blackbeard met them, to lessen the number of fortunate and quick encounters a little.

About the log pose, I assume New World log poses don't work very well in Paradise, because Ace was using a Paradise log pose during his chase: he came from the New World, so if that log pose worked in Paradsie he would have had no need to change it, but he did. Also, given the way Oda handles prices in One Piece, belis seem to have a similar value to yens, so fifty thousand belis would be… around 440 USD/410 Euros.


	4. Chapter 4

Well, here I am with chapter 4. I'm sorry about the delay, I've had this written since I posted chapter 3, but I've been sick and couldn't post last week as I wanted to. So, instead, you get a holiday update :)

* * *

 **Chapter 4**

As it turned out, the first pirate ship they came across was docked at the port of the very same island they were on. Marco and Ace knocked out the few pirates guarding it quickly and efficiently, and they were gone before anyone came back. While there had been a fair amount of treasure on board, they had limited storage space, and thus stole only the money they found and a handful of particularly valuable jewels that Marco could stuff easily in her shorts' pockets and then transfer them to a pocket in her bag.

They sat at a restaurant for dinner that night and Marco spread their map on the table after she was done eating. Ace was still inhaling food.

"If we leave early tomorrow, we should make it to Reverse Mountain by lunchtime. We'll need a map of Paradise if Teach is already there, but I'd rather buy it in the Grand Line. I don't want to think how expensive one of those will be out here," she muttered the last part, and Ace coughed, almost choking on his food. Marco glared at him half-heartedly and went back to look at the map.

"You gonna sleep tonight?" Ace asked after he had ordered third servings to a shocked waitress.

"I'm not tired," Marco replied.

"Marco," Ace said, his voice serious enough for Marco to look up at him. He looked about as serious as he had sounded.

"Yes?" she asked mildly.

"I get it, okay? I _do_. You don't want to sleep and risk having dreams or something, but you have to. I don't know how long you can go without sleep before it starts affecting you, and I don't want to know. We're going into the Grand Line now, and if we have to hunt Teach there you'll have to stay awake at night if we don't make it to an island in a day, to wake me up if the weather looks like it's gonna kill us. You _know_ the weather there. Much better than me. So, for fuck's sake, _try_ to sleep."

Marco wanted to argue, she wanted to say that she could go on for weeks without needing to sleep, but her own words from days ago came back to her: they didn't know how long it would take them to catch up to Teach. If it was long enough that lack of sleep started to affect her, it could be a problem.

She sighed.

"All right."

* * *

Crossing Reverse Mountain with the Striker was an interesting experience, way different than doing so with a traditional ship. It involved a lot of yelling, of Marco telling Ace to just move to the middle of damn current before it turned too strong to let them maneuver, and it was the first time they unfurled their sail since they had left the New World.

It had been years since Marco last crossed Reverse Mountain, and the sight of the rushing canal, the feeling of crossing through the clouds as they headed for the top of the Red Line, and being thrown up in the air before falling down again were things that she hadn't realized she had forgotten so many details about. The sight of the Grand Line opening up before them, though, was as astounding as she remembered, even if the sense of wonder from the first time was gone now. It was replaced by the precarious feeling of sitting between Ace's legs on the seat of the Striker, with no rails on any side, and only one of his arms around her instead of having a sturdy ship to hold on. She didn't mind that change.

She half-expected to find Laboon blocking their path —it had happened, once— but he wasn't there. Oh, he was on sight, but not blocking the way out of the descending canal.

Marco didn't have to say anything for Ace to head towards the lighthouse. There was a lawn chair outside, and she saw Crocus put his newspaper down and stare for a moment before he moved to his feet.

Marco nudged the arm Ace still had around her waist, and as soon as he removed it she jumped out of the Striker. She had to turn her arms into wings to cover the full distance, but she landed on her feet before Crocus.

"I'll be damned," she heard Crocus mutter, and for the first time in days Marco felt like smiling without any bitterness.

"Hey, Crocus. You look old."

Crocus scoffed.

"Oh, shut up. Not all of us have found the key to eternal youth."

"Don't you mean eternal middle age?" Ace asked from the Striker, now close enough that he could anchor it and jump over to the coast.

"Oh, charming," Marco retorted, but kept her voice light enough for Ace to know she wasn't offended. Jokes about her age were far too common amongst their crew. Thatch had certainly made sure—

She shook herself mentally. She couldn't think about that now.

"You're that crazy kid that joined Whitebeard a couple years ago, aren't you?" Crocus asked Ace, drawing Marco's attention to the present again. "I remember you."

"You'd better. We had to spend a week here, after all."

"Did you crash the ship?" Marco asked, making her best effort to tease.

"No," Ace said.

"Something like that," Crocus said at the same time.

Marco expected an offended response from Ace, but he seemed distracted staring at Laboon.

"That's new," Ace said, pointing at Laboon's head.

Marco looked up, and immediately noticed what Ace meant. There was what seemed to be paint on Laboon's head, covering part of his many scars, and while Marco couldn't see the shape, she would swear what she did see resembled part of a flag.

"Yeah, it's very recent," Crocus replied with a wide grin. Happy, really, and Marco had to ask.

"Care to elaborate?"

Crocus chuckled.

"A few days ago, a pirate crew arrived here. Some stuff happened and I ended up telling them about Laboon's story. The captain grabbed their ship's mast and got into a fight with Laboon, then announced it was a draw and said they would fight again once his crew had crossed the Grand Line. He drew his flag on Laboon's head and told him not to ruin it by hitting Reverse Mountain. Laboon hasn't hit it since."

Marco found herself smiling.

"That sounds like a good pirate. May I see the flag?"

"Oh, sure. But it's not a very good drawing." Crocus laughed. "Doesn't look much like the real thing. Oi, Laboon! Can you come here?"

Laboon complied, as Marco had seen him do many times in the past, and lowered his head closer to them, revealing… well, it was obviously meant to be a pirate flag, but it looked like the representation of a flag that a little kid would have drawn. The skull was grinning, but aside from a hat it was a very generic flag.

Ace cursed next to Marco, drawing both her and Crocus' attention.

"What?" asked Marco.

Ace turned to Crocus.

"Was this guy's name Luffy?"

"How do you know?" Crocus said.

Ace started to laugh.

Marco couldn't help it, between Ace's genuine mirth —she hadn't realized how much she had missed it— and Crocus' puzzled expression, she joined in on the laughter.

"What?" Crocus insisted.

It took Marco a moment to get herself back under control. Ace was still laughing.

"Monkey D. Luffy," she started, grinning, "is Ace's little brother."

"Really? Talk about coincidences." Marco nodded. "But you two aren't here because of that. What brings two commanders of the Whitebeard Pirates to the entrance to the Grand Line?"

Marco and Ace sobered up. Marco reached into her bag for her copy of Teach's sketch.

"Have you seen this man?" she asked, showing it to Crocus.

Crocus looked at it for a moment before nodding.

"He crossed two days after Luffy, actually. I thought he looked familiar. He was accompanied by a couple of guys, and they were on a huge _raft_ of all things." Crocus scoffed.

"A raft?" Marco asked.

"Made of logs and everything. I thought they were crazy. I can't have been too far off if you two are after them. What did he do?"

"He killed Thatch." It was Ace who spoke, and Marco was surprised by how grateful she felt that she hadn't been the one who had to say those words.

Crocus didn't say anything for a long moment, then he nodded somberly.

"I can point you to the route they took. They argued over it while they patched up the raft." He turned to Marco. "How are you holding up?"

Marco shrugged.

"I'll be better once Teach is dead."

Crocus nodded, understanding exactly what Marco hadn't said.

"Are you leaving, or do you two have time for a meal with an old man?"

Marco smiled softly.

"Ace can't refuse food."

* * *

They left the Twin Cape with a route to follow and a map Crocus had given them, one that Marco trusted far more than anything she could have found in a shop.

"All right, the sea close to the Cape is pretty chaotic, so we'll try to cover as much distance as possible before we have to stop," Marco said, sitting on the floor of the Striker, her fire mixing with Ace's to protect her from the strong flames needed to push the vessel to its full speed.

It was a good thing that Ace had taken an involuntary nap after lunch, because this meant they could probably travel until tomorrow morning with only a few nap stops.

"I estimate it'll take us two days or so to reach the next island, so do try not to wolf all of our food down too quickly," she added with a smirk over her shoulder.

Ace stuck his tongue out at her.

"I know how to ration my supplies," he muttered. "How come you're such good friends with Crocus, anyway? You can't have spent that long at the Cape."

… _Oh_.

Well, Ace _had_ to start accepting the idea that he had grown up hearing bullshit rumors and stories at some point. Marco and Pops had told him some real stories over the years and tried to talk about the issue, but…

"Crocus was a pirate doctor for three years. On Roger's ship."

 _Three, two, one…_

"He sailed with _ROGER_?! But he's a decent guy!"

Marco sighed.

"And so was Roger. I know you've got your reasons to hold a grudge against him, but that was the world's reaction, not Roger's doing." Ace didn't reply. Marco was certain he was sulking and doing his best to ignore her. But they were in a tiny space and he couldn't storm off like was his norm whenever Marco tried to approach the issue of Roger in any depth, so she pressed on. "Think about it. What do you think the world in general would say if... say, you and I were to have a kid?"

Again, Ace didn't reply. He didn't need to, Marco knew very well what was going on through his head. She had heard enough stories about his childhood that she could repeat some of the words herself.

"Does that make us monsters?" she asked in a low voice. "Would it make that hypothetical kid less deserving of life than any other just because we were the parents?"

"Why do you insist so much on this?" Ace asked finally, and he didn't sound angry. He sounded almost defeated, as if he had spent a long time trying to figure out Marco's reasoning and couldn't do it. Maybe he had.

"Because, as long as you hate the idea of being his son, you'll hate a part of yourself. There's this part of yourself that you see as undeserving of… _anything_ … simply because you're Roger's son. And that's not true. It's not right that you value yourself so little," she finished in a whisper, and leaned back against Ace's legs.

Ace tangled a hand in her hair and rubbed her scalp.

"You're a fucking nuisance," he muttered.

"I'm also right," she said, closing her eyes.

* * *

" _I am going to kill you," Marco said, her voice slow and cold. It was enough to make her asshole siblings try to control their giggles. Even Pops raised a hand to cover his mouth._

 _Thatch just grinned wider._

" _Hey, I had to do something. You didn't want to tell me your age."_

" _Because I didn't want you to make a fucking cake. I don't know why you insisted."_

" _Because," Thatch started slowly, and he raised a hand to theatrically cover his chest over his heart, "I couldn't believe it when Pops told me you don't celebrate your birthday. He didn't even know the date!"_

" _I don't see the point of birthdays," Marco argued, crossing her arms._

" _That's sad," Thatch said._

" _Whatever. It still doesn't explain_ this _," Marco growled, jabbing a thumb in the cake's direction._

" _Weeell, I figured you don't celebrate your birthday because you're tired of doing it," Thatch explained with a wide grin. Which was a load of bullshit because Marco_ knew _that Pops had told Thatch the story of how they had met. Knowing Pops, he had probably omitted her age back then intentionally to see what Thatch would come up with._

 _Marco glared up at Pops._

" _I'm not a fucking thousand years old," she snapped, and that set the crew off all over again._

 _Marco glared at the innocent-looking candle shaped like a number one, followed by three equally innocent-looking zeroes._

 _Thatch took advantage of the moment Marco stopped to glare around the gathered crew to hide behind Pops' leg. She should never have acquiesced and told the brat the date of her birthday. Honestly, she wasn't even sure_ how _she remembered that date in the first place._

 **To be continued**

* * *

Okay, so I don't know where the hell Blackbeard got that raft of his, but we know he wanted a real ship (he tried to exchange Bonney for a ship with the marines, after all), so that thing was clearly provisional. For timeline's sake, I'm going to go with the idea that Lafitte and Burgess had the raft by the time they met Teach, because that thing is huge and must have taken some time to build. They simply modified the sails to add the Blackbeard Pirates' flag.


	5. Chapter 5

Fun fact: for some reason, when I planned this, I was sure that Nami had been sick for five days, and plotted everything accordingly. Then I checked the Drum arc and saw it was three days. I had to tweak my entire timeline and make a few adjustments to this chapter -sighs-

* * *

 **Chapter 5**

Storms were an absolute pain. The first few hours of sailing the Grand Line had been easy enough —extreme changes in temperature were no big deal for either Ace or Marco, and the wind wasn't as much of a nuisance to the Striker as it would have been to an average ship— but then it had started _raining_. Marco hadn't been wrong when she said a few days ago that the Striker was useless in the rain. Or, well, not completely useless as long as they could cover the area that powered the engine enough for Ace to create a flame, but doing it was… tricky.

Which was how Ace found himself sitting on the Striker's seat, his burning feet shoved right against the engine, while Marco knelt on the floor of the small space that passed for a deck, folded over Ace's legs to try to protect his feet from the rain as much as possible. The flame was small, but at least they were moving.

"You know, anyone who looked at us now would think this is something else," Ace joked, keeping his eyes on the agitated sea.

"Oh, shut up," Marco told him.

* * *

The island they reached was reasonably larger than the previous ones they had been to, and even after circling it, Marco and Ace had to hike a good ways into the land to confirm that Teach wasn't here any longer.

They returned to the port town where they had anchored the Striker, and Ace made a beeline for the first restaurant he saw.

Marco followed him, amused. They hadn't finished all of their supplies, but Ace hadn't appreciated having to be careful about them and he was making up for it now.

Ace didn't put up much of a fight when Marco told him to go catch up on sleep while she asked around about Teach, and Marco left the hotel room with one of the sketches and her wallet as soon as Ace passed out on the bed.

Marco had expected their situation to change once they entered the Grand Line, but nobody seemed to recognize her around here either.

The Whitebeard Pirates had been more lax than she had realized if her face wasn't easily recognizable in the Grand Line. Marco would have to talk to Pops about it.

Finding someone who remembered Teach was easy. That raft Crocus had mentioned raised a lot of eyebrows, and soon Marco learned that Teach had left the island with one —or two, depending on one's perspective— addition to his crew: a sickly-looking old man and an equally sickly-looking horse. An odd choice, but Marco knew how little appearances could matter when it came to one's fighting skills. Or any other skill set, really.

* * *

The room was bright when Ace blinked awake. That was odd, he had expected to wake up in the middle of the night or something. Instead… He sat up and looked around until his eyes caught sight of the clock on the wall. It was morning. Ace had slept longer than he had thought he would.

Marco was curled up on the mattress next to him, asleep. Ace was glad to see she had managed it, even if he didn't know how long ago she had come to bed.

Deciding to let her sleep a little longer, Ace dragged himself out of bed and went to take a quick shower.

He stepped out of the bathroom fifteen minutes later, naked and toweling his hair in an attempt to get it to stop dripping all over the place. He couldn't say he was surprised to find Marco awake and sitting on the bed. Marco raised her eyebrows, then pointedly looked him up and down.

Ace smirked.

"Like what you see?"

"It's not bad," Marco conceded in her most convincing tone of indifference, the one Ace knew meant she was feeling anything but indifferent.

Ace snorted.

"Yeah, okay. I may have left a bit of a mess in the bathroom," he warned her, but it really wasn't his fault that the damn shower head was so _weird_.

It was Marco's turn to snort.

"As long as I can shower, I don't care. I'm not the one cleaning here." She stood up and walked past him into the bathroom. She left the door open. "I dropped by a laundromat yesterday afternoon, so most of our clothes are clean," she explained, and Ace turned to watch when he heard her start to undress. "We'll need to buy some winter gear, though. The next island is a winter one."

Ace grimaced. Winter clothes took up a lot of space, they would be a nuisance.

"How long until we can leave?"

Marco stepped into the shower.

"The log pose should have locked by this afternoon."

* * *

"Oh, damn!" Ace said, lowering his fork.

"What?" Marco asked, looking at him with curiosity. They were eating breakfast at a small restaurant, and Marco hadn't noticed anything odd.

"I forgot to ask Crocus which route Luffy has taken," Ace said, almost like a whine.

"You can wait until he appears on the newspaper again and figure it out from there," Marco suggested. Being Ace's brother, and from all the stories she had heard, Marco wouldn't be surprised if she saw Luffy on the newspaper before long.

"I guess," Ace said, and then perked up suddenly. "I'll ask around to see if he's been here! I just need a copy of his bounty…"

That was how Marco found herself spending the last few hours on this island asking about Monkey D. Luffy and making sure Ace didn't accidentally get into any fights as he stole various copies of Luffy's bounty poster from bars.

* * *

They were silent. It had taken Ace some time to notice, but aside from the conversations that were necessary for their trip and a bit of banter here and there, Ace and Marco had barely spoken since they left the Moby Dick.

Ace didn't like it.

Marco was currently folded in the space before the seat, careful to keep today's newspaper out of the reach of the fire at the bottom of the Striker as she read the news.

Ace bent forward and rested his chin on her shoulder.

"Anything interesting?" he asked to break the silence.

"Not really. Unless you consider the government's anti-Revolutionary Army propaganda interesting. They've upped the tone since the revolutionaries got Vira a few days ago," Marco replied distractedly.

 _The Revolutionary Army?_ Ace thought, just as an idea crossed his mind. He grinned widely. Gramps would murder him if he found out about this.

"Hey, have I ever told you about Dragon?"

Marco glanced at him sideways.

"You know him?"

"Not in person, but he's Luffy's dad."

Marco turned around suddenly —Ace had to pull back to avoid an accidental hit— and lowered her hands. The newspaper caught on fire, but Marco didn't seem to care.

"Are you _serious_?"

"Yup," Ace replied, still grinning. Marco's eyes were wide open in genuine surprise. It wasn't often that Ace managed to surprise her.

"Wait," Marco said, narrowing her eyes, and Ace could see how she was reaching the right conclusion, "does that mean that Dragon is _Garp's son_?"

"The very same," Ace confirmed.

Marco shook her head in disbelief.

"So Garp, the great hero of the marines, has a son who leads the Revolutionary Army, a grandson who is a Commander in the Whitebeard Pirates, and another grandson who wants to be the Pirate King." Marco snickered. "Damn, I'd pay so much to see his reactions when any of you appear on the newspaper."

"He caught up to me once, you know?" Ace said casually. "Scared the crap out of my whole crew when he showed up, and then started yelling at me and trying to punch me."

"I can imagine that easily," Marco said with the expression of someone who had met Gramps.

"He wanted us —me and Luffy— to become marines. I think he was so insistent because of what Dragon was doing."

Ace started on a tale of some of the most outrageous of Gramps' training sessions.

* * *

As the cold weather stabilized, Marco and Ace put on their new winter clothes. They had only bought coats, long pants, gloves, and —in Marco's case— a pair of boots. Those were only the garments that would be on sight, but they had made a considerable dent in their funds.

"Maybe I should sell those jewels," Marco mused, adjusting her black gloves. "They're worth around ten million belis, so they should take care of our money issues for a while."

" _Ten million_?" Ace repeated, glancing down at Marco's bag. "But they're… just a few," he finished lamely, gesturing with his hands to illustrate how small they were.

"A few high-quality pieces old enough to be deemed relics," Marco said, grinning. "I doubt those guys knew what they had on their ship."

Marco stepped up to Ace and buttoned the two top buttons on his black coat, ignoring his grimace.

"It's a winter island, and probably in one of their cold seasons judging by the snow out here. You'll stand out."

"This is ridiculous," Ace said. "And you'll stand out more than me anyway." He glanced very pointedly at Marco's uncovered head.

"It's not my fault there wasn't an acceptable hat," she said, crossing her arms.

"Maybe if you hadn't chosen a _purple_ coat…"

"It's the one I liked. It's not my fault they didn't have any normal colors. Did you want me to buy the orange hat or the red one?"

"What's wrong with orange hats?" Ace asked defensively, raising a hand to touch the rim of his hat.

"Paired with a black coat? Nothing. With purple, however… Oh!" she exclaimed, pointing over Ace's shoulder.

Ace turned and saw a quickly growing dot on the horizon. The island, covered in snow as it was, was hard to distinguish against the monochrome background of the grey sky, but as they approached, Ace saw that it had many turret-like massive mountains that would be a pain to climb for anyone who wasn't accompanied by a devil fruit user who could fly.

They circled the island once, as was customary by now, and Marco determined that Teach wasn't anywhere near the coast. They would have to fly over the place to check the center part of the island. There was no way Ace was dealing with the hassle of trudging through who knew how much snow when Marco could fly.

Ace spotted a bay that seemed like a good place to anchor the Striker and he directed them towards it.

They had to climb up the rock a little to reach firm land. There was no village or town on sight.

"Tell me you can pick up some presences with haki. I don't want to wander this place looking for civilization," Ace nearly begged.

Marco chuckled.

"I can. From what I sensed, there doesn't seem to be any towns right on the coast here. A bit odd, but I don't know what this island is like," she said with a shrug. "That way," Marco said, pointing in one of the many all-white directions.

* * *

They reached a village after about half an hour of walking, and by that time it had stopped snowing.

The place looked like it had seen better days. Marco wouldn't quite say that it was the sight one would expect in the aftermath of a battle, but it certainly seemed to have been ransacked recently, and as if the citizens were in a hurry to fix the damage as quickly as possible.

It was a very bad sign.

"I don't like this," Ace muttered from next to her, and Marco nodded somberly. They were both clearly thinking about the same thing.

"Keep the sketch hidden," Marco advised him right before they reached the outskirts of the village. Marco hoped their luck would hold up and no one recognized them here, because the last thing they needed were terrified citizens who had clearly just been attacked.

By fucking Teach.

 _Goddamn it, this is on us._

Ace nodded.

They received a few mistrustful looks as they entered the village, but there were no startled exclamations, panic, or people reaching for weapons, so it was safe to assume that nobody recognized them.

Ace walked straight for the first restaurant they saw and Marco followed him. It was a safe enough move for any traveler to make. The place had a few customers, but it was easy to find an empty table for them to sit. A table for four, because Ace's plates tended to take up a good amount of a table's surface.

"You waiting for anyone?" a waiter asked when he approached them, looking dubiously at the two empty seats.

"No," Marco replied, making sure to sound friendly and unassuming, "but _he_ ," she pointed at Ace with her thumb, "eats like five people. We'll need the extra space."

The waiter looked at her just as dubiously, but he seemed definitely amused by the time Ace was done ordering his meal, which was, as Marco had said, five times the amount of food that she ordered.

It took four trips for all of their food to be on the table.

"I don't want to be rude," Marco started just as the waiter set the last of the plates before Ace, "but did something happen here? This place looks like it just saw a battle or something."

The waiter scoffed in an odd mix of annoyance and sadness.

"That's a way to put it," he muttered. "It was as one-sided as you can have it."

"Oh?" Marco raised her eyebrows in curiosity. Ace had started to eat, the perfect image of someone too hungry to be interested in the conversation, but Marco knew he was paying attention.

The waiter seemed to ruminate for a moment before shrugging in a gesture that could be easily read as 'what the hell, why not?'

"Mind me sitting?"

"Not at all," Marco said, gesturing to the empty chair next to her.

He sat down.

"Okay, so a few days ago these pirates showed up. I'm not sure of the details, it wasn't here, but I've heard they made a friend that joined them or something at Gyasta —that's down south. Whatever. Nobody thought much of them because they were just five guys and they weren't known faces. Until they decided to attack. They overwhelmed the royal army in no time, and that useless piece of shit of a king we had hightailed it, taking the remaining army with him. We had to let the pirates do whatever the hell they wanted, because we just couldn't do anything about it," he said the last part through clenched teeth in very clear frustration. "At least they left quickly."

"Did you happen to overhear any names? Or the crew's?" Marco asked, very carefully filing what little information there was away. Pirates who just had arrived from the Four Blues rarely had the strength to overpower an entire army. Teach was strong, that was true, but to do that… he must have found some interesting crewmembers. That was troubling. And there had been nothing about this incident on the newspapers. Was the government covering it up or did they simply not know?

"Everybody got their crew's name, they were pretty vocal about it. The Blackbeard Pirates."

Marco nearly snapped her fork in two.

 _You can't be fucking serious._

"Blackbeard?" she repeated mildly, carefully putting the fork down.

The waiter nodded.

Marco reached for her bag. This was worth a shot.

"Did the captain happen to resemble this man?" she asked, pulling the sketch out and unfolding it.

The waiter tensed.

"That's him," he practically growled, and gave them an extremely suspicious look. "Friend of yours?"

"We want to kill him," Ace replied before Marco could. More crass than she would have been, but that would have been essentially her response.

The waiter gave them an evaluating look.

"I won't be the one stopping you, but those guys are dangerous."

"We're aware," Marco said.

* * *

"Oi, Marco," Ace said. He put down the spoon from his dessert, "what's the next island?"

"It's…." Marco took the map out of her bag and unfolded it, "Alabasta." She whistled softly. "It's pretty far from here. It'll take us over a week to get there, I think. We'll need to resupply. Why do you ask?"

"I've been thinking about Luffy. I know it's unlikely, but I'd like to meet up with him."

Marco hummed and looked down at her map.

"Well, I suppose we could take a break. Besides, Alabasta is a large kingdom, it'll take us a little longer to search if we don't catch word of _Blackbeard_ quickly."

Ace grimaced at the name, feeling disgusted that Teach dared to make such a bold declaration by calling himself that. Focusing on the present, he opened his bag to look for one of Luffy's wanted posters.

"Great. I'll leave a message for him, just in case."

"He's not on this route," Marco pointed out reasonably. Ace chuckled. Reason was the _last thing_ anyone should trust where Luffy was concerned.

"Knowing him," Ace said, and grinned when he found the rolled-up bounties, "he'll probably jump through three or four routes before he reaches Sabaody."

Marco had her eyebrows raised when Ace looked up at her.

"You know, I'm growing more and more curious about this little brother of yours."

Ace chuckled, cheered up by the thought of Marco maybe meeting Luffy, and stood up to go leave a message.

Marco followed him with her wallet out. She always refused to let him leave without paying after a meal. That was such an _odd_ quirk for a pirate.

 **To be continued**

* * *

Something very important I have to say is that I'm ignoring the timelines Oda gave back in the Drum arc (or at least what the scanlations say). I think that's one of the things Oda messed up in the plotting, because back then he said that Drum had been attacked by Blackbeard months prior to Luffy's arrival, which contradicts the flashback where Ace shows Whitebeard Luffy's wanted poster. I decided to go with the later timeline because it made much more sense (also because it's more likely to have been thought out more thoroughly; back at Drum Oda didn't expect One Piece to last more than 10 years).

According to the Drum timeline, Ace had been there a week before Luffy. I made a closer estimation of how long the Strawhats really must have taken to reach Drum since Luffy's bounty came out, and leaving a week is impossible. So for this story's sake, the Strawhat Pirates reached Drum the day after Marco and Ace left.

No armed force appeared to stop Marco and Ace at Drum because, as they had the sail folded, there was no sign on their boat that they were pirates. Also, they did not disembark on the same place as the Strawhat Pirates. I've kept them going to the same village where Ace left his message, which is relatively far from the places the Strawhats went to.

Also, figuring out the routes in the Grand Line is a bit of a mess here, considering that the Strawhats didn't exactly follow a normal one, but this is what I've settled on.

-Ace was following a log pose, so it's likely to assume Alabasta actually follows Drum as part of that route (also because we don't have any reason for him to go there specifically: the anime filler one sounded ridiculous even to 13-year-old me who didn't know that was filler).

-From Igaram's words at Whiskey Peak, we know that Alabasta is also in the Strawhats' original route, and yet I find it very unlikely that the Strawhats managed to find their next island without a log pose when they reached Drum (remember that it hadn't locked at Little Garden, so it was still pointing to that island). So I'm working under the assumption that two routes merge at Alabasta: the Strawhats' original one, and Drum's route.

-And, for this plot's sake, I've decided that the Blackbeard Pirates never made it to Alabasta: they attacked a pirate ship halfway there and found an eternal pose to Jaya. Aware of that island's reputation, they knew they were much more likely to find a pirate strong enough for their purposes there than at Alabasta, so they followed the eternal pose.

-Jaya is not part of the Alabasta route. Right before that ship fell from Skypiea, Robin said that the island that follows Alabasta is an autumn one, but Jaya is a spring island and is very close to Alabasta (it didn't take the Strawhats even a full day to go from one to the other in the manga. There was a lot of filler in the anime).


	6. Chapter 6

I'm sorry it's been so long since my last update. My health has been horrible since around Christmas and I haven't been doing much of anything, but here is chapter 6. I hope I won't take so long with the next one.

* * *

 **Chapter 6**

" _I can't believe you idiots ate_ everything _," Thatch complained, glaring at them._

" _It was a competition, son," Pops reasoned from his position on the floor._

" _No, you we're trying to see if you could get Marco too full to keep eating. Now we're out of food and she's the only one who isn't sick," Thatch practically growled, crossing his arms in a way that would have been more intimidating if he had gone through one or two growth spurts. Now it was just cute._

 _There were some groans of protest across the deck. Someone retched._

 _Marco chuckled._

" _Oh, leave them. We're only two days away from the next island, it's no big deal," she said._

 _Thatch whirled around to glare at her._

" _And_ you _! You're supposed to be the responsible one! Why did you agree?"_

 _Marco smirked._

" _I just like how hopeful they get when they think they've found a way to get past my powers. It's fun to watch them realize they were wrong."_

 _Thatch threw his hands up in the air._

" _And then you call_ me _a kid!"_

" _Well, you've got the right height," Marco pointed out reasonably._

 _Thatch glared at her._

" _Shut up and concentrate on fishing. I'm not going hungry just because you lot are idiots."_

* * *

Marco frowned and looked down at the newspaper. There was an article about the civil war on Alabasta —Marco had honestly forgotten about that— with even more grim news. Now that she thought about it, there had been something about soldiers deserting to the rebel army on the paper only a few days ago. It looked like things were about to turn truly violent.

"Ace," Marco called.

"Yeah?"

"I'm not sure how relevant this will be, but Alabasta is in the middle of a civil war. There might be some trouble even if Teach isn't there."

"Really?" Ace asked, crouching down behind her. "Do you think he'll be there?"

Marco shrugged.

"I don't know. I guess that depends on how long the log pose takes to lock. But there are a lot of reporters at Alabasta right now, so if he does something like at Drum we should know."

Ace hummed, leaning forward to rest his chin on Marco's shoulder.

"Do you know much about this war? Like who are the bad guys?"

"Not really," Marco replied, then glanced sideways at Ace. "And we're _not_ using our break to interfere. The last thing we need is to appear on the newspaper and let Teach know we're on his trail."

Ace wrapped his arms around her.

"That means no fighting?" he practically whined.

Marco scoffed.

"That means no _starting_ fights. I know you too well to hope you'll avoid fights for ten days. Just try not to draw attention to them."

Ace turned his head to kiss Marco's cheek.

"I can do that."

Marco wasn't so sure. She just hoped whatever mess Ace got himself into wasn't relevant enough to make it to the papers. And if they did appear on them… well, Marco had a plan B if Teach managed to avoid them all the way to Sabaody.

* * *

Marco sat on the bottom of the Striker, her hands placed so the fire was as far as possible from the fishing rod, and waited. Back at Drum they had realized that there was no way they could carry supplies for a nine-day long trip (the time was according to the locals) on the Striker, so they had decided to buy a fishing rod. Storing enough water was more important than bringing enough food, after all. They tied it to the mast when they weren't using it; not an ideal place, but they didn't have space for it anywhere else.

Something tugged on the other end of the rod.

"Ace, get ready, this thing is huge," Marco said. She pulled, trying to angle the movement so that the fish would go up in the air instead of falling on them.

Marco shoved the rod into Ace's waiting hands, transformed as she jumped up, and used her talons to cut the fish into three pieces. She kicked the head and tail back to the water and transformed a hand to grab the now more manageable body.

Ace had turned to tie the fishing rod back to the mast when Marco landed with their meal. Ace made the fire on the bottom of the Striker grow and Marco knelt to hold the fish over it.

"We should've gotten something to hold the fish for this," she muttered. This wasn't the first time one of them had to keep their food above the fire while it cooked.

"Why? You look great like that," Ace said, moving to sit on what passed for a seat on the Striker.

"Because I'm holding food or because I'm kneeling?" Marco asked, rolling her eyes.

Ace grinned.

"Both."

* * *

This leg of the journey had completely screwed up Ace's sleep pattern. Because he was the only one who could direct the Striker, whenever something that required them to move happened Marco had to wake him up. Given the chaotic nature of the Grand Line, this meant that the most Ace had managed to sleep in a go since they left Drum was four hours. Only two hours more often than not.

Right now Marco was sitting on the Striker, with Ace curled at the bottom and his head resting on her thighs.

If Teach wasn't at Alabasta, they would find a good hotel room for Ace to sleep a whole day. They had agreed to wait there for ten days, after all. Marco would probably sleep, too, because their current arrangement meant she wouldn't sleep at all for the entire trip.

The sky started to turn grey with storm clouds all of a sudden and Marco sighed. She moved the hand she had been using to caress Ace's hair down to his shoulder to shake him awake.

* * *

"Oh, come on! That's as fast as you can go?!" Marco yelled.

Ace looked up to glare at Marco. They both knew that she could fly faster than the Striker could move, but that didn't mean Ace was going to give up so easily.

"We're still not at the finish line!" he yelled back.

"Of course," Marco said in that voice that Ace knew meant she would have smirked in her human form. "Let's fix it, shall we?"

Marco accelerated, moving to the rock way faster than Ace could push the Striker. She landed, and Ace saw a blue flash that marked her transformation. The rock was still too far for Ace to see her properly.

When Ace finally reached the rock —which was larger than he had expected— he found Marco lying on her side, a smirk on her face.

"I was beginning to think you wouldn't make it," she said teasingly.

Ace glared at her.

"Why do you challenge me if you know you're going to win?"

"Why do you accept if you know I'm going to win?" she asked.

 _Why indeed_ , Ace thought, grinning. He bent down to press the button that released the anchor.

"I like to give you your prize," he said.

Ace jumped to the rock and took the two steps separating him from Marco. Damn, but it had been too long. He dropped to his knees next to her.

"Anything in particular you'd like?" Ace asked.

Marco turned to lie on her back.

"Surprise me."

* * *

Finally, after the expected nine days of travel, the weather stabilized into that of a summer island.

"About time," Ace said, stretching his arms above his head. "I need to _walk_."

Marco chuckled.

"Me too."

"Not like me. You at least could fly," Ace reminded her. He loved the Striker, he really did, but he was sick of it right now. That break in their trip couldn't come at a better time. "And I want a bed."

"I wouldn't say no to that," Marco said, nodding.

"Hope so, because you're sleeping too."

"I know. Let's take a turn around the island and then we'll go up the river." She glanced down at the map. "We'll still have to fly above a few towns to check them."

* * *

Teach wasn't at Alabasta. Marco had mixed feelings about that fact. On one hand, a look around proved that Teach hadn't attacked this already ravaged country, on the other… _Teach wasn't here_.

"Bed now. We'll ask the locals tomorrow," Ace said, pulling Marco out of her thoughts.

Marco raised her eyebrows.

"You don't want to eat first?"

"Yeah, but we can do that at the hotel, right?"

"Of course."

* * *

Ace woke up early in the morning wrapped around Marco, who was already awake.

"Am I a good pillow?" she asked instead of a standard greeting.

"More like a plush toy, but yes," Ace replied, burrowing his head into Marco's shoulder.

"I hope you're not calling me fat," Marco said, and Ace was sure that she had raised her eyebrows.

Ace moved his arms to hold Marco around the waist.

"Not at all."

"Mmmhh. Okay. Let's get up."

"Do we have to?" Ace asked, lowering his arms further around Marco's body.

"Yeah, we do. We have to ask around," Marco said, taking hold of Ace's wrist to move out of his grasp.

Marco stood up and leaned down as if to kiss him, but she didn't.

"If you hurry up, you can shower with me."

Marco started to laugh when Ace jumped out of the bed. Ace glared at her and pointed in the direction of the bathroom.

* * *

Nanohana was the port closest to the direction ships arrived from the start of the Grand Line, and as such it was the most likely town for Teach to have reached, as well as for the Strawhat Pirates to disembark at if they had taken any of the two routes that met at Alabasta.

However, it seemed that Teach hadn't been here. Nobody remembered seeing a giant raft, and no one recognized the sketch of Teach's face when Marco and Ace showed them. Marco had even tried to ask about the sickly man and the horse, because those were the two best descriptions he had for Teach's crew, but nobody had seen them either. Ace had also asked around for Luffy, showing one of the wanted posters, but no one remembered him. Ace had assured Marco that Luffy, despite being short and physically unremarkable, was hard to forget for those who met him.

Marco had finally gotten around to selling those jewels she had been carrying around, and now they were at a restaurant. Marco had just pulled out the sketch and was asking the bartender while most of the customers stared at Ace in horror as Ace stuffed his face.

"Has this man been here?" Marco asked, holding the sketch up. "He would have eaten as much as this guy," she added, pointing with her right thumb at Ace.

The bartender shook his head.

"No. I think I'd remember someone like that," he said, glancing at Ace in clear apprehension.

Then Ace's head dropped into his plate and mayhem broke in the restaurant.

Marco sighed.

"Don't worry," she said, raising a hand to get at least the bartender's attention, "he's okay."

"He's not okay!" the man yelled. "He just dropped dead!"

 _Dead?_

"He's just asleep," Marco said, much to the bartender's incredulity. However, there was far too much chatter around for other people to have heard her.

"Ehm, miss…" the bartender started in that hesitant voice of someone who didn't know how to approach an issue, "I'm sorry, but your friend just dropped while eating, that's not—"

"He always does that," Marco interrupted. She heard something about a desert strawberry amongst the talk behind her and turned around on her stool to clear the misunderstanding before the whole town could gather here to see what had happened. There were a lot of people at the door already.

Then Ace sat up.

Marco sighed, ignoring the screams that ensued.

"You _had_ to go and fall asleep, didn't you?" she muttered.

Ace looked around, clearly confused by the amount of people that had gathered in a moment. Then a woman approached him hesitantly.

"Uhm… are you okay?" she asked.

Ace grabbed her skirt to wipe his face. The woman shrieked.

Marco kicked him.

"Ace, _manners_ ," she hissed.

"Oh, sorry," Ace mumbled, turning to her and rubbing the back of his head. They both ignored the people yelling at him. "I fell asleep."

Marco sighed and pushed one of the plates closer to Ace. He started to eat again.

"Please, excuse him," Marco apologized to the room at large, "he can't avoid doing that."

As if on cue, Ace's head dropped again.

Marco ran a hand down her face. She had _known_ those nine days of irregular sleep would affect Ace, even after the long hours sleeping at the hotel.

People started to wander off, muttering in disappointment about the lack of entertainment.

Giving Ace another dubious look, the bartender started to remove the piles of plates that had accumulated on the counter before him. Marco asked for dessert, both for herself and for Ace. She scoffed when Ace woke up the moment the plate was placed before him and started to eat as if he hadn't fallen asleep at all.

Ace emptied his plate in the time it took Marco to take a single bite from hers. Marco rolled her eyes.

"Oh, by the way," Ace said, bending down to rummage in his back. He straightened up with one of Luffy's wanted posters, a huge grin on his face. "Have you seen this guy?" he asked, showing the bounty to the bartender. "He wears a straw hat and—"

"You really have guts to eat out in public," a voice interrupted.

Marco glanced over her shoulder. She hadn't been paying much attention to her surroundings, and now there was a marine standing at the entrance of the restaurant. Marco raised her eyebrows. The marine had a decent enough aura to him, certainly strong enough to handle most of the pirates on this area, but he couldn't seriously expect to stand a chance against Marco and Ace. And yet he was here.

 _Interesting_ , Marco thought, smirking.

"What are the first and second division commanders of the Whitebeard Pirates doing in this country?" the marine asked.

Everybody in the restaurant pretty much panicked at the revelation, and Marco sighed. There went their anonymity. At least it hadn't been Ace's fault. Marco turned around on her stool, and so did Ace.

"We're looking for my little brother," Ace said with a wide grin.

The restaurant had gone nearly silent except for a few whispers.

"So, what now?" Marco asked, leaning back against the bar. "No offense, but it's not like you can win against us."

"I'm not really interested in you," the marine said, surprising Marco. She raised her eyebrows. "I'm looking for another pirate."

"Then you could just let us go," Ace suggested in a very reasonable voice. Marco bit back a chuckle. As if a marine with the guts to approach them on his own would agree to that.

"I can't do that," the marine said predictably, "as long as I'm a marine and you're pirates…" He readied his right arm as if to deliver a punch, and the appendage started to turn into smoke.

A logia.

Marco grinned, then glanced sidelong at Ace to indicate the fight was his. If they had already been found out by marines anyway, they could at least take advantage of the situation. A fight against another logia would be good for Ace.

She startled suddenly, focusing behind the marine. There was something coming.

"Ace—" she started to say, but it was too late.

A yell, and then something hit the marine on the back. The man was propelled forward, and he took Ace, the counter, and the wall with him. Along with many other walls.

Marco covered her eyes and shook her head. Where the _hell_ had Ace's reflexes gone?

"A RESTAURANT! I'M STARVING!" the same voice that had yelled before exclaimed in pure happiness, and Marco turned around to find none other than Monkey D. Luffy standing in the middle of the room amongst the incredulous stares of everyone present.

Marco blinked.

 _I see the family resemblance_ , she thought in amusement.

Luffy jumped on the stool on Marco's left, the closest free one to the bartender, and grabbed a set of cutlery.

Everybody except Marco was staring at him in horror.

"Hey, food! Foooood!" Luffy yelled again, grinning widely and banging the fork and knife on the counter.

The bartender blinked.

"H-Hey, kid…"

Marco slid her almost full dessert plate before Luffy.

"Here, while you wait," she said.

The food was gone in a moment and Luffy said something through his full mouth that Marco managed to decipher as a 'thanks'.

The bartender blinked again, this time in confusion, glanced at Marco, and turned around to start bringing Luffy food. Marco realized belatedly that everybody present was probably expecting her to attack Luffy for sending Ace flying.

"Are you Monkey D. Luffy?" Marco asked, resting her right elbow on the counter and leaning her face on that hand.

"Yeah," Luffy said. The bartender placed two dishes before him and Luffy started to wolf their contents down. Marco chuckled.

"Do you even _have_ money for that food?" she asked, remembering those childhood stories Ace had told her about leaving restaurants without paying.

Luffy froze and an extremely guilty expression appeared on his face. Marco chuckled again.

"I'll pay."

Luffy spoke another, louder, 'thanks' through his full mouth, and continued to pile food into it as the bemused bartender brought him more plates. Luffy's cheeks were growing as he ate, and Marco thought how ridiculously appropriate it was that such a display was her first proper demonstration of Luffy's powers.

Luffy tried to say something else, but this sentence was too long for Marco to decipher. She was fairly certain it was a question.

"Eat first, ask later," she said, pointing at the pile of plates.

Ace was finally coming back. Marco saw the exact moment in which Ace recognized Luffy. She also saw the marine behind him. Ace opened his mouth, started to call Luffy's name, and the marine slammed Ace's head down.

"STRAWHAT!" the marine yelled with the kind of intensity that meant _Luffy_ was the pirate he was after. As impressive as it was that Luffy already had a marine focused on capturing him, there was something that worried Marco much more right now. Namely, what the hell was Ace thinking to be so oblivious about his surroundings when he knew there was an enemy present. Marco was going to kick his ass for this.

Luffy was still eating, staring at the marine, who grew exasperated by the second.

Marco rolled out of her stool and away from the scene just in time to avoid being sprayed with the food Luffy spat out when he recognized the marine.

Then Luffy started yelling through his full mouth, stuffed all the remaining food into it, and ran away. The marine went right after him.

Marco shook her head. If she hadn't already known better, she really would believe that Ace and Luffy were blood relatives.

Ace finally got himself together, jumped to his feet, and ran after them. At least he remembered to take his bag.

Chuckling, Marco approached the stool she had been sitting on, picked up her bag from the floor, and brought out her wallet.

"How much do I owe you? I'm paying for the kid, too."

The bartender blinked uncomprehendingly at her.

* * *

Even without haki, it would have been easy to follow Luffy's path, because the ruckus seemed to shake the whole town. Ace was obviously using it to follow him, his presence close to the chase at all times. Deciding to avoid the citizens, Marco jumped onto a rooftop to reach them that way.

She arrived on the scene just in time to hear who no doubt were Luffy's crew calling him a lot of uncomplimentary things for bringing the marines straight to them. Marco stayed back and let Ace block the smoke marine's attack before it hit Luffy. Watching Luffy's surprised reaction upon seeing Ace, it was obvious that Luffy hadn't noticed him in his rush to find food.

Marco dropped to the ground behind Ace.

"You finally remembered you're a logia?" she asked teasingly.

Ace grinned.

"Sorry. Caught me off guard."

"Oh, hey! You gave me food!" Luffy exclaimed, recognizing Marco.

Ace snorted in amusement.

"Okay, you go with them, Marco. I'll catch up later."

 **To be continued**

* * *

And here is Luffy! :D

We know it took nine days for the Strawhats to go from Drum to Alabasta because on the fifth day of the trip, Luffy ate all their bait for fishing (after he, Usopp, Chopper, and Carue had eaten all their provisions), and later, when they reached Alabasta and a sea cat appeared before them, Zoro yelled that it was their first meal in four days. Assuming they had managed to fish while they had bait, but that once Luffy ate it they didn't fish anything, that makes it nine days.


	7. Chapter 7

Hey guys, here's chapter 7 :D Remember me saying I was doing better? I was so well that I ended up in hospital xD But NOW I'm better, and catching up with my writing :D

Speaking of which, I've started a tumblr side blog (maisstories (here goes a dot) tumblr (here goes a dot) com/) to focus specifically on it. There I'll post any relevant info about updates, comments on how I'm doing and what I'm writing, whining about said writing… So, please, follow me there if you want to know how stories are going :3

Thanks a lot to KohanaTrustMe for the help :D

* * *

 **Chapter 7**

Nami was extremely confused about almost everything that was going on right now.

In hindsight, knowing that Luffy had somehow managed to get a marine to hunt him down all the way to the Grand Line wasn't _that_ surprising (this was Luffy they were talking about here), but Nami didn't understand anything else that had happened in the last five minutes.

Whoever this Ace guy was, Luffy obviously knew him, but it was very unlike Luffy to leave a friend alone against an opponent as strong as Smoker. And yet, Luffy had ordered the crew to leave without a second thought the moment Ace had told Luffy to go.

And there was the woman, too. Luffy had recognized her as well, but Nami thought they had just met (really, giving Luffy food was the best way to ensure he remembered you), and she was obviously friends with this Ace. That was obviously enough for Luffy to be okay with having her come along with them when they fled.

"You're Ace's friend?" Luffy asked from just behind Nami. "That's why you know me?"

"Yeah. He's told me a lot about you," the woman —Marco, Ace had said? That was an odd name for a woman— replied. She sounded far too amused and at ease for someone who was running away from the marines with an unknown group of pirates, even if she was familiar with one of them.

"Nice! How's he doing?" Luffy asked enthusiastically.

"He's doing fine. Why? Haven't you been following the news?" Marco asked with a teasing edge to her voice, surprising Nami. That was an extremely on point guess to make about Luffy for someone who had only heard about him from someone else.

Luffy laughed.

"No."

They finally reached the Merry, but before they could leave, Vivi stopped to send Carue off with a letter for her father explaining everything that was going on with Crocodile.

* * *

Marco watched as the blue haired girl sent the duck away with a letter, filing away all the information from what she heard.

 _Crocodile's behind this mess?_ Marco thought, completely unsurprised by the news. She had met Crocodile in the past, and she had no doubt that everything about him being the model Shichibukai was nothing but a façade. Marco hadn't known why he bothered, before, but now she thought she had found the answer, even if she still didn't know what Crocodile got out of causing a civil war.

She glanced around at Luffy's small crew, impressed by how calm they looked in a set of circumstances that were looking increasingly clearer to Marco. Short of the marines' strongholds and a few select individuals such as Rayleigh, Shichibukai were the most dangerous people for someone to pick a fight with around Paradise.

 _I_ definitely _see the family resemblance_ , she thought again.

The blue haired girl —she must be someone important in Alabasta, given what Marco had just witnessed— got on the ship, and they were finally ready to leave.

"Hey, will your friend be able to catch up if we go?" the long-nosed kid asked Marco, and she found herself the center of attention.

"Yeah, don't worry. We've got a ship here."

A guy with green hair pulled the anchor up with his bare hands ( _promising_ ) and they left the coast.

"So who was that guy?" the other girl, this one with orange hair and a log pose around her wrist (was she the navigator?) asked Luffy once they were a short distance away from the coast.

"He's my brother, Ace," Luffy replied with a grin, much to his crew's shock.

Marco leaned back against the ship's railing and watched as Luffy explained in more detail about Ace, though she raised an eyebrow when Luffy said that Ace was looking for One Piece. Marco was pretty sure One Piece was the last thing Ace would want to look for in this world, no matter how much of a treasure it was said to be.

Then Luffy said that he could beat Ace in a fight now and that was, of course, when Ace showed up and punched Luffy to the deck. Marco snorted.

Marco raised her eyebrows when Ace offered Luffy to join the Whitebeard Pirates, aware of what the answer would be even before Luffy spoke. Luffy refused in such an offhand tone that it made Marco chuckle.

"That mark on your back is real then?!" the long-nosed guy asked, but before Ace could do more than nod, the girl with the orange hair turned to stare at Marco.

"Earlier, you called her Marco," she told Marco, her eyes wide.

Marco smiled. She found it interesting that, marine aside, Luffy's crew were the first ones to recognize the flag on Ace's back and Marco herself.

"He did," Marco confirmed.

"Is she famous?" Luffy asked, tilting his head to the side.

Marco started to laugh when half of his crew yelled at him in incredulous horror, and she heard Ace snort in amusement as well.

"You haven't changed at all," Ace said with an amused grin. "Anyway, I just wanted to give you something and we'll be going," he said, reaching into one of his pockets.

Marco blinked, surprised.

 _You're not serious_.

"Ace," she said, and she pretended that her voice didn't sound as faint as it did, "are you sure of that?"

"Huh? What do you mean?" Ace asked, holding the piece of vivre card he had just found.

"It's been three years since you saw each other, are you sure you just want to leave?" _You never know when it'll be the last time you'll see someone_ , she wanted to add, but she bit on it just in time. They weren't alone here, and that wasn't something she wanted to say in public.

Ace seemed to get the message anyway and he rubbed the back of his neck in clear hesitation.

"Well… no, not really," he admitted, glancing at her and then at Luffy.

Luffy had a serious expression on his face that Marco was sure was unusual for him, then he grinned.

"You can come with us! We're going to the desert!"

"To the desert?" Ace asked, and Marco saw him glancing at the many supplies Luffy's crew had gathered.

"Yeah, I'm gonna kick Crocodile's ass!" Luffy exclaimed, falling into a fighting stance.

"That's _not_ what we're doing!" the blue haired girl yelled at him.

* * *

Nami stared at the scene unfolding before her, certain that she had missed something in the exchange between Marco and Ace. She did, however, understand the important parts. Nami remembered too well the fear she had felt for years every time she left her island, unsure if she would see Nojikop ever again.

Ignoring Luffy as he told an increasingly skeptical Ace and an amused Marco that he _was_ going to beat Crocodile, Nami turned to Vivi.

"How long is the trip to our destination?" Nami asked.

"To Yuba? Around half a day," Vivi replied, and she smiled. She no doubt understood Nami's thoughts.

Nami turned around, and hesitated when she saw that, in the moment it had taken her to ask Vivi, Luffy and Ace had started to argue (Luffy was saying something about how he _was_ stronger now and that he could beat Crocodile). That left Nami with the choice to either interrupt the argument or address Marco. Interrupting meant punching not only Luffy, but also _Fire Fist Ace_ and probably burning her hand in the process, but talking to Marco… well, she was _Marco the Phoenix_. That option was as scary as willingly burning herself.

"I don't bite, you know," Marco said from her position by the railing, and she still sounded amused.

Nami's back snapped straighter without her permission, and she turned to look at Marco.

"Sorry," she apologized, but decided to avoid any excuses that would make her look worse. "As Vivi said, the trip will take half a day. It's okay if you come, of course, but we'll need more supplies. Especially water," Nami explained, then she glanced at Luffy and Ace. "Or maybe food is more necessary. How much does Ace eat?"

Marco chuckled.

"As much as you're thinking, I believe."

 _Of course_ , Nami thought, feeling a resigned kind of amusement that made her relax somewhat.

"Oi, Ace!" Marco called.

When Ace didn't answer, Marco sighed, shook her head, and then Nami found herself blinking in confusion during the time it took her to understand that Marco had somehow _disappeared_ from where she had been standing and she was now sitting on top of Ace. Ace, who was no longer crouched on the railing, and instead was face down on the floorboards.

There was a long beat of silence and then Luffy burst out laughing.

Ace glared up at him for a moment before he started laughing as well. Nami stared in confusion, just as she could see everyone but Marco was doing, until Ace turned his attention to Nami.

"We need food?" he asked, grinning.

Nami nodded. She wasn't sure what she had just witnessed, but _that_ had made Ace look unquestionably like Luffy's brother.

The ship shook violently, and she belatedly realized that the sound of cannon fire had filled the air just an instant before.

"Enemies?!" Usopp yelled in fear.

They all turned in the direction the attack had come from, and Nami's eyes fell on the flags of the ships approaching them.

"Baroque Works?!" she exclaimed, looking at the many ships they couldn't take down from here because they only had one cannon.

"I'm on it!" someone said, and it took Nami a moment to realize it was Ace. By then, he had already jumped overboard and Marco was standing by the railing again.

Nami watched as Ace sailed off towards the enemy ships in a tiny boat that seemed to have its bottom on fire.

* * *

Marco tried not to laugh at the surprised reactions of Luffy's crew when Ace took down those ships with a single attack.

"He's such a show-off," she muttered softly, before focusing back on the present. "Could any of you accompany me to get provisions? You already know what's best to take," she said, gesturing at the crew's piled up provisions.

"Shouldn't we dock for that?" the little —well, Marco wasn't sure what he was— animal asked, looking up at her.

"No need for that," Marco replied. She decided to be a show-off herself and transformed.

She would have smirked at the reactions that got.

"I'm coming!" Luffy yelled enthusiastically.

The girl with the orange hair punched him to the floor.

"You weren't even with us to buy them, you idiot!" she yelled at him. Marco saw the blond guy at the stairs perk up, but before he could say anything, the girl (and Marco could swear she had seen the blond about to speak, too) continued, "I'm coming. I paid for everything."

She got a few funny looks, which told Marco that there was a story behind those words.

"Okay, hop on," Marco said.

"Not fair," Luffy muttered. "I wanna fly."

"Don't you have your brother to catch up with?" the long-nosed guy asked in exasperation.

Ace was almost back to the ship.

* * *

Nami held on to Marco's neck, careful not to squeeze but also desperately trying not to let go. She was _flying_ , and while it was amazing, she was acutely aware of the height separating her from the ocean right now.

"What about the marines?" she yelled to be heard over the wind.

"It's okay, we're going to the other side of town. And if we run into them, I'll just beat them."

Oh, right, for a moment Nami had forgotten that Marco was a super powerful pirate with a bounty on her head that made Nami salivate simply by thinking about it.

"Do you have money?" Nami asked suddenly, aware that she couldn't exactly refuse to pay if Marco asked her to do it.

Marco chuckled.

"I do. As long as you haven't dropped my bag?" she asked in what Nami was certain was a teasing manner.

Nami glanced at the bag at her back. She moved down and wrapped her arms tighter around Marco when they unexpectedly dropped. She had squeezed her eyes shut without realizing it, and when she opened them again, Nami found herself soaring barely above the level of the sea at a dizzying speed.

They entered Nanohana through what seemed to be one of the ends of the port, and Nami heard a few startled yells before Marco moved, far too quickly, into an alley and stopped suddenly.

Nami stepped down, mournfully admitting to herself that she had liked being on the air, and Marco transformed with a flash of blue light. Nami passed the bag to her and then looked Marco over for a quick moment.

"You'll have to buy clothes, too, or you'll burn yourself in the desert. Ace too," she added, remembering that Ace was only wearing shorts and his hat.

Marco opened her mouth, for a moment looking as if she was about to argue, before glancing down at Nami's clothes and smirking.

"Why not? I'd love to see Ace's reaction," she agreed, taking off towards the open end of the alley.

Nami followed.

"You don't have to dress like this," she assured Marco. "This was just Sanji's… ehm, tastes getting in the way."

Marco shook her head.

"Oh, no, I wouldn't want to stand out amongst you," she said with that same smirk from before.

 _Oh, dear, she's serious_ , Nami realized, for a moment wondering what was going on through Marco's mind, but she didn't ask. Sanji was going to be very happy when he saw them at Erumalu.

"By the way," Marco continued, "what's your name?"

"Oh, I'm Nami."

Marco smiled at her.

"Nice to meet you."

Nami was struck by the sudden realization that, scary pirate or not, Marco was nice.

* * *

" _Oh, please," Thatch complained for the umpteenth time. "Haven't we got enough already?"_

" _No," Marco said flatly. "You're a member of our crew now, brat, and you'll look the part," she said, pointing over at the store behind her._

 _Thatch groaned._

" _You're_ pirates _. Pirates aren't exactly known for dressing well."_

 _Marco crossed her arms below her breasts._

" _I don't care. You're not wearing those rags you arrived in, and I'm sure as hell not letting my clothes even in a washing machine with them, so you're getting new clothes or you'll wash those yourself."_

" _You're evil," Thatch whined. "Why couldn't the old man come with me instead?"_

" _Because Pops likes to give in too much to his kids," Marco said, raising her eyebrows. "Now get in there before I decide to drag you."_

 _Thatch, in all of his mature twelve-year-old wisdom, stuck his tongue out at Marco before he obeyed, wearing a massive pout as he walked into the store._

 _Marco shook her head and followed. She hadn't signed in for babysitting when she had agreed to join the crew, but damn if she didn't like the brat._

 **To be continued**

* * *

Okay, so originally Marco and Ace weren't going to tag along to Yuba, but then I checked the manga for the timeline and realized just how rushed everything in Alabasta is. Basically:

-Day 1: the Strawhats reach Nanohana, run into the marines and Ace, cross the desert, and arrive late that night at Yuba.

-Day 2: the Strawhats spend the day walking through the desert. Early that morning we have the Baroque Works meeting at the casino.

-Day 3: the Strawhats reach Rain Base at around 6am, the mess here takes around 2-3 hours, and the battle of Alubarna started at around 1-2pm (the cannon was set to fire at 4:30pm).

So I realized there was no way for Ace and Marco to spend some time with the crew BEFORE the Strawhats went into the desert. However, I refuse to use the anime excuse to have Ace tag along, because that made no sense even to thirteen year old me before I read the manga and learned it was filler.


	8. Chapter 8

Hey, look who's not dead :D

I'm sorry about the delays on… pretty much every story. I'm trying to get back to write, and I really hope the next update won't take nearly a year. I'm so sorry for the long wait, I hope there's still someone around to read this.

* * *

 **Chapter 8**

"That's it, that's our destination!" Vivi announced, pointing towards the coast of what remained of Erumalu. She had been trying hard not to think about crossing through this destroyed city since her arrival at Alabasta, and so far she had managed it thanks mostly to Luffy and Ace's constant chatter as they caught up. Now, however, seeing the dried-up land and the silhouettes of the abandoned buildings…

"They're back!" Usopp yelled from the crow's nest, and Vivi turned around, grateful for the newest distraction.

Sure enough, the blue bird that was Marco the Phoenix (and Vivi still hadn't wrapped her mind around the fact that she had met such powerful people so casually) was approaching the ship. Nami was riding on her back, looking far more comfortable there than she had been when they had left the ship, and Marco held two barrels of water on her talons while a large bag dangled from one of them.

Marco stopped a few feet above the deck, high enough to gently put the supplies down without destroying anything. Sanji was already on his way to take them to the rest of their provisions when Nami jumped down, Marco's bag hanging from her shoulder and a shopping bag in one hand. Marco transformed mid-air, and Vivi blinked in utter bewilderment when she realized Marco's functional shorts and shirt had been replaced by a danseuse outfit not unlike the ones Vivi herself and Nami wore, this one with the top in purple shades.

Sanji froze mid-movement, and Vivi didn't miss the fact that he took the chance to sneak a look at Marco's legs before the skirt settled around them once Marco had landed on her feet.

"What took you two so long?" Zoro asked in annoyance, and Vivi wanted to either cover her face with her hands or punch him. It was one thing to snap that at a crewmember, but this was _Marco the Phoenix_. Sure, she had seemed relaxed enough earlier, and Ace had been nothing but nice and easygoing so far, but _you didn't snap at extremely dangerous people_. Then again, these were the Strawhat Pirates, and Vivi really needed to start getting used to the fact that they just didn't care about basic things like tact and self-preservation.

"We weren't long, but we had to avoid the marines that someone," here Nami glared at Luffy, who was unaffected by it, "dragged here."

"Whatever," Zoro muttered, and started to move the supplies that Sanji had neglected in favor of staring at Marco.

Luffy laughed.

"But you got the food, right?"

Nami sighed.

"Not _your_ food."

"What's with the clothes?" Ace asked suddenly, and he sounded a little off. Vivi turned to look at him and noticed that his eyes were more open than they had been before and he was… staring at Marco. His face wasn't so different from Sanji's, actually, except for the lack of a leer. There was a dusting of pink on his cheeks.

Vivi turned to look at Nami, her eyebrows slightly raised, and she caught sight of Marco shrugging. Marco took the shopping bag from Nami and threw it at Ace.

"Put that on, will you?" she said.

"Oh… okay," Ace agreed, still sounding a little off and _still staring at Marco_.

Nami returned Marco her bag, met Vivi's eyes, and smirked.

Oh.

 _Oh_.

* * *

It took Usopp a grand total of ten seconds once the girls had returned to realize a very crucial fact. _Marco the Phoenix was a woman_. Now, that was obvious, it was impossible to miss, and it wasn't a problem. By itself. The problem came when you added it to the fact that Sanji was here. Sanji, who was staring at Marco in the same lecherous way he did with Nami and Vivi. Sanji was clearly seconds away from saying something very ill-advised. Nami would punch him for one of his comments, but for all Usopp knew Marco might kill him. Hell, she might kill more than only Sanji. Or Ace would do it (Usopp wasn't blind, and Ace was drooling too). They came from a very powerful crew with a very terrifying reputation. Hell, Usopp had followed Ace's career as a rookie in fascination just a few years ago, and for all he knew Marco was _even stronger_.

Usopp made a split-second decision: Sanji wasn't allowed anywhere near Marco.

His mind made, Usopp grabbed Sanji by the back of his coat and dragged him off to get the supplies ready for travel before Sanji snapped out of his perverted daze and could so much as open his mouth.

* * *

"Why is it _black_? You could've gotten me some colors," Ace whined half-heartedly, putting on the clothes that Marco had bought him, which were very similar to what Luffy and the other men in the crew were wearing.

"With that hat? Fat chance."

"You're insulting orange _again_?"

"It's not my fault I like purple better," Marco replied with a shrug, and Ace's eyes slid to the skimpy purple top Marco was wearing. He knew that had been her intention when Marco smirked. "Anyway, I'll be wearing a coat to the desert too. Average people would get burnt otherwise," Marco explained, and she opened her bag.

"We're not average people," Ace pointed out.

"So? I wanted the outfit," Marco said, pulling out of her bag a bundle of equally purple fabric. "It could be… fun, later, don't you think?" she added with a smirk.

Ace felt himself blush.

"Don't say that where my brother can hear," he hissed, but Luffy was distracted by Vivi handing him his own coat.

Ace laughed when Sanji pretty much despaired upon learning that the girls would be wearing coats of their own, but things soon turned serious.

Ace hadn't asked what they wanted to do in the desert, other than some details about Luffy's insistence on picking a fight with Crocodile, but as they approached the coast, Vivi —who happened to be the country's princess— explained her intention to stop the civil war brewing in Alabasta.

Ace was left both impressed and a little worried. She had admirable intentions, but stopping a civil war was no small thing.

And Luffy had landed himself in the middle of it. Of course he had.

* * *

Luffy had picked a fight with a bunch of kung fu dugongs. Marco knew about them, she had been to Alabasta a few times in the past, and she spent a good five minutes laughing while Chopper —the animal whose species Marco still hadn't identified— bartered part of the crew's food away to convince the dugongs to stay behind instead of following Luffy into the desert. She'd also had to kick Ace to the ground to stop him from showing off by fighting the dugongs himself.

"I think we'll be sharing our food after all," Marco told Ace, who was still pouting on the ground.

Ace's pout grew.

"It's Luffy's fault he lost his food."

Marco crouched down next to him and poked his cheek.

"Oh, come on, don't pretend you're not a doting older brother. You'd give him your meat if he so much as made puppy eyes at you."

"Okay, we can go," Chopper announced after handing the dugongs over half of the Strawhats' food.

* * *

They left Erumalu in a somber mood. Vivi had explained the circumstances that had started the unrest and rebellion at Alabasta, Crocodile's plan which had worked smoothly up until now, and even Luffy had grown serious listening to her words.

As they advanced, however, the mood lightened.

It soon became obvious that Chopper, with the fur all over his body, was in no way suited to the desert climate, and grew exhausted in under half an hour of walking.

"I could carry you," Marco offered, dropping to her knees in front of Chopper.

Chopper shook his head with obvious effort. He was panting as if he'd run across the country or something.

"Don't want to bother you," he said.

"It's not a bother. I'm immune to the weather," Marco said with a smile that Ace had long since dubbed her older sister smile, "and I don't get tired."

"You don't?" Luffy asked in surprise, and Ace could've sworn his eyes brightened. "Let's fly!" He yelled suddenly, and Zoro punched him before Ace could.

"Don't be an idiot," Zoro muttered, and Ace chuckled. Luffy really had found himself a nice crew.

Chopper didn't need any more convincing, and Marco picked him up before they continued on their march through the desert. Ace didn't miss the comments Sanji, the crew's cook, muttered under his breath. He found it hilarious. It was clear Sanji liked women far too much, and some of the crew members seemed to have made it their mission to keep him away from Marco.

Ace wanted to laugh at it.

Someone else might have been in danger if they got too perverted with Marco, but Ace was pretty sure she wouldn't do more than kick Sanji halfway to Yuba. He was a member of Luffy's crew, and Luffy was default family to the Whitebeard Pirates.

Ace didn't share this information.

* * *

Marco had forgotten how fun early rookie adventures could be. She had her stories, of course, and the crews that joined the Whitebeard Pirates shared theirs, but living through one was an entirely different question.

She didn't offer any help past carrying Chopper. She had a bag of food strapped to her back, and Ace was carrying their water, but Luffy had lost a game and was forced to carry all of the Strawhats' supplies. Which was stupid, unnecessary and hilarious.

"Oh, stop whining," Ace jabbed. "You won't be able to beat Crocodile if you can't even pull that."

Predictably, that started a fight between them. Which was the tenth physical fight that'd broken out since they had started to walk, much to Princess Vivi's exasperation and annoyance.

"Don't worry, they're too stubborn to drop dead," Marco told her, and she had to force herself to keep her smile in place when she realized the exact words she'd used.

Jokes about dying had been common in the crew, but now, after Thatch…

"That's not very reassuring," Vivi said with an exasperated smile, thankfully cutting through Marco's thoughts.

"Do you want me to stop them, then?" Marco offered, and she raised a leg for emphasis.

Next to her, Nami rolled her eyes.

"Don't bother. They'll be at it in again ten minutes anyway."

At that exact moment, Usopp spotted a set of rocks and Luffy disentangled himself from Ace and took off at a dead run with the supplies. Vivi had promised that they could eat at the next rocks they found.

"See? He's fine," Marco said with amusement.

Nami snorted.

* * *

Some birds had tricked Luffy and stolen the supplies from him.

Yes, it sounded ridiculous, but that was exactly what'd happened.

"Don't laugh too much or I'll share _stories_ ," Marco told Ace between chuckles, and he pouted.

"Oh, come on," he complained. "I haven't gotten such a good chance in three years." Which, granted, didn't mean much given that Ace hadn't seen Luffy in three years.

Damn, he'd missed Luffy's antics.

And the idiot had taken off after the birds in an attempt to retrieve the stolen supplies. Ace would be worried if he didn't know that Marco could track him down.

That was, of course, until he heard a very loud rumbling. Ace turned in the direction Luffy had run off to, and saw him fleeing from a fucking _giant lizard_. With a camel.

Sighing, Ace turned his arms to fire and prepared to aim.

"Wait," Marco told him, and raised an arm to put it before Ace.

"What?" Ace asked, exasperated.

Marco gestured with her head, and Ace saw Zoro and Sanji rush off towards Luffy and the lizard.

"Let's see how they handle it."

* * *

Desert lizard was very tasty.

Ace was laughing, complimenting Luffy on finding such a promising crew while they had their improvised meal. They still had the two barrels of water that Marco had bought, though Nami was policing it with her fists ready to punch whoever drank too much —namely, Luffy.

After the meal, they focused on the recently-arrived camel.

The camel was a rude and perverted beast, according to all the men, who only agreed to let women ride him. Marco waved off the idea and it was Vivi and Nami who settled on the camel, who Nami named Eyelashes for some reason.

* * *

Marco thought they'd had enough distractions with the dugongs, the birds and the lizard, and she was wrong. Obviously.

Not even ten minutes after they'd resumed their trip, as they followed Eyelashes' pace (who was going far too fast for people on foot), Ace and Luffy began to have hallucinations.

They had eaten a poisonous cactus along with the lizard.

Marco rolled her eyes, set Chopper down, and knocked the two of them unconscious with a kick, much to everyone else's pained grimaces. He let Zoro and Sanji drag them across the sand, and bent down to pick Chopper up again.

"Tell me that thing doesn't have lasting effects," she asked Chopper, even though she guessed his lack of panic was answer enough.

"No. They should be fine in a couple hours."

"Good," Marco said, and rolled her eyes. "I hope that teaches them not to eat random things they find."

"Doubtful," Usopp muttered. Marco had to agree.

* * *

The excitement was far from over. They ran into what had to be every single monster in the Alabasta desert, and Zoro and Sanji took care of them until Ace and Luffy woke up. Then, as though they were offended by the time lost to unconsciousness, it was the two of them who beat up the creatures they encountered. They made a competition out of it and everything. Usopp kept tally of the blows and time it took each of them to beat a monster, and much to Luffy's annoyance he'd lost every single time.

Eventually, night fell around them. Chopper was delighted by the cold the desert night brought with it, but no other member of the Strawhats seemed any more pleased by it than they'd been by the day's extreme heat.

However, there was something to be done about the cold, and after some pestering Ace agreed to remove his coat and set his entire upper body on fire to give them some heat.

It was hilarious to see everybody, even Eyelashes, huddled up around Ace as they advanced.

Eventually, Yuba appeared on the horizon.

Yuba, that was being ravaged by a sandstorm.

 **To be continued**

* * *

Okay, so here I mainly went through the canon shenanigans in the manga. I'm using them as a way for Marco and Ace to get to know the crew. I hope it wasn't too boring.


	9. Chapter 9

Almost another year later, the next chapter is here :D No promises this time.

* * *

 **Chapter 9**

The oasis of Yuba was an absolute wreck.

Marco sat on the roof of the abandoned inn they would be sleeping in and looked over the run down town that must have been prosperous at some point, long before sandstorms began to take it away from the inhabitants.

"It's a mess," Ace said from next to her, elbows resting on his knees and face pillowed on his hands. "You think they can save this place?" he asked, looking sideways at Marco.

"Perhaps. It'd depend on how natural this weather actually is," she replied. Marco had met Crocodile in the past, and she wouldn't put it past him to destroy a town just to further his plans.

"Was afraid you'd say that," Ace muttered. He moved to drop back on the roof, arms stretched at his sides.

They fell silent, the calm interrupted only by the ruckus the Strawhat Pirates were making downstairs. They certainly were a lively lot.

"We should leave tomorrow," Ace said suddenly.

Marco turned, surprised, to look at him.

"Are you sure?" she asked.

Ace sighed.

"Yeah. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to stick around, but I'm pretty sure shit's going to go down, and I'd get too involved. I know he's got to be stronger, but I still think of Luffy as the kid I left back home three years ago," Ace confessed, a hint of shame in his voice.

Marco reached down and placed a hand on his shoulder.

"I understand. It's hard to stop being an older sibling sometimes." _Especially now_.

* * *

The original idea had been to head back to Nanohana, where they Strawhat Pirates would go to the oasis of Katorea (the rebellion's new base, because they hadn't been at Yuba anymore) and Marco and Ace would take the Striker to continue on their way.

That was until Luffy decided to sit against a dried up tree right outside of Yuba and announced he wasn't going.

Ace watched with a sense of wonder and actual admiration for his little brother as Luffy and Vivi argued, as Luffy pointed out why they should be going after Crocodile instead of the rebellion. When Luffy and Vivi started to actually fight, Ace could really see how much Luffy had grown since Ace left their home island.

"Looks like we're parting ways now," Marco said in a low voice next to him. When Ace looked at her, he saw a tiny smile pulling her lips up.

* * *

Usopp nearly fainted when Ace and Marco announced they were leaving. They had been his security blanket in this whole Crocodile disaster, but with them gone they would be back to square one. A small rookie crew against a Shichibukai and his very large personal army of bounty hunters.

Shit.

Luffy just grinned, as though he'd been expecting just that.

"You be careful," Ace was saying, pointing a finger at Luffy as though Luffy would _listen_. "Don't underestimate that asshole, okay? Shichibukai are no laughing matter."

Luffy bobbed his head in a nod, his serious expression not reassuring in the slightest. It was the sort of face that had preceded all of their previous battles.

Then Luffy turned to Marco.

"Next time, we'll go flying!" he announced in that way of his that meant his words were a fact and you could do nothing but accept them.

Marco snorted.

"Earn it. I don't fly with just anyone, brat," she said good-naturedly, and Luffy laughed.

* * *

The trip back to Nanohana was a fast one. They flew over the desert, high enough that the blinding sun should prevent anyone looking up from spotting them. Marco took a quick detour over Katorea, and they quickly saw the massive rebel camp from the sky. That was no longer in the Strawhat Pirates' hands, Marco guessed, but she wondered how this civil war would end.

Returning to the Striker wasn't particularly pleasant. Weeks into their search, the Striker had become cramped and uncomfortable, and even Ace complained.

According to what their map said, their next destination was an autumn island, and Marco's estimation was that the trip would be two days long.

In the end, it took them over three days to reach the island. During the first night, at around the most annoying possible time, the Grand Line decided to make a show of how unpredictable the time would be. This distraction also meant no news coos approached the Striker after the second day of sailing, and thus it wasn't until they reached their destination that they read the news.

They received a very disapproving glare from a shopkeeper when Ace all but squealed and snatched a newspaper up without a glance at her. Marco sighed, paid for the paper, and dragged Ace off to a less crowded area of the port while he was still reading.

Despite being on the cover, the article was a follow-up from yesterday news.

The civil war in Alabasta was over. Both sides of the conflict had stopped fighting halfway through a bloody battle in Alubarna. Crocodile had been arrested, suspect of engineering the whole thing.

No mention of the Strawhat Pirates was made, but there was a mention of Princess Vivi's reappearance, and that was enough for them to know Luffy and his crew had been involved. For the rest of the day Ace was a very proud older brother, and Marco was rather impressed. What could she say? She liked those kids.

Unfortunately, they had no other good news.

"I can't believe nobody saw him," Ace complained that night over dinner in a pause from inhaling the food from a pile of plates.

Marco frowned.

"It doesn't make much sense," she agreed. It was one thing for Teach to keep a low profile at Alabasta, but here? This island had nothing special, and such a long silence didn't fit the behavior pattern they'd encountered so far.

"You think he switched routes?" Ace asked after a short pause. He was glaring at the table so intensely Marco wouldn't have been surprised if it caught fire.

"I don't know," Marco said honestly.

Unfortunately, even if that was the truth, they couldn't leave the route. Not here. This island had nothing but a tiny town with little more than the locals needed. It was too close to Alabasta to be a commercial port in any merchant routes, and the log pose set quickly here, so people barely spent the night. Aside from a few inns, Marco had seen little in the form of useful shops.

"We need information. We can't just change routes blindly."

Ace grumbled something, but they didn't really have a choice.

* * *

The next morning, they awoke to the news of the new bounties on Monkey D. Luffy and Roronoa Zoro.

It was no small feat that Luffy had made it to super rookie level so early on in the Grand Line, and Ace laughed as he showed the bounty to Marco.

"Wish I could shove this into Izo's face," he said wistfully, remembering Izo's disparaging comment about Luffy's first bounty what felt like a lifetime ago.

He regretted his words immediately. With mention of Izo came the reminder that they hadn't spoken to the crew at all since they had left, and Ace found himself incapable of meeting Marco's eyes after this thought. He missed them, but Marco must be worried sick. She was too much of a big sister and a daughter to _not_ be.

"Maybe we should find a den den mushi?" Ace offered to Marco's sandals.

"…Yeah," Marco said.

It was then that it occurred to Ace she hadn't suggested they contacted the crew either.

* * *

Marco spent most of the morning on the Striker engrossed in the newspaper. The Strawhat Pirates' new bounties had come along with a stack of new wanted posters, with no story to explain them and thus no outrageous article about a rookie wiping the floor with a Shichibukai. It was a pity, but an expected happening all the same.

That didn't mean the paper lacked in interesting information.

The Shichibukai were expected to meet later today, purportedly to discuss potential candidates to fill Crocodile's position. Which to her was code to say the World Government was making a show of reminding the world they still had other six Shichibukai while the Gorosei struggled to find a replacement. The paper spent four pages talking about the potential candidates, some more likely than others. Marco's money, if she had to bet, would be on the Pirate Prince Cavendish: from what she'd heard, the guy was vain enough to accept the position, if only for the attention it would bring him.

* * *

Their next stop was a considerably larger port town. After Marco had ascertained that —unsurprisingly— Teach wasn't around, they decided to separate to cover more ground. Three hours after their arrival, she was rather certain that they would find no news of Teach here either, so she'd begun to ask about navigation supplies as well. It might be good to locate an eternal pose or two in case they heard news from some other route.

She was talking to a street vendor about Jaya, a nearby island that had some potential because of the large pirate port it held, when she heard a commotion. She'd sensed Ace's presence even before she turned around, but that didn't prevent them from being thoroughly confused when she turned around just in time to watch as he was dumped into the river by a bunch of angry townspeople.

 _The fuck?_

* * *

 _Thatch was laughing as he brandished his wanted poster, waving it around for everyone to see._

" _Not bad, eh?" he would ask every time, and while the crew mostly rolled their eyes or indulged him, the random strangers Thatch stopped gave him very puzzled looks. Marco hadn't missed the empty space that was forming around them._

 _After the tenth embellished version of the story that had earned Thatch the bounty, Marco decided she'd had enough._

 _She fished out her own wanted poster, rolled it up, and threw it with what she thought to be astounding accuracy at Thatch's face._

 _His offended expression and the week-long cold shoulder that followed were entirely worth the sulky silence that followed her action._

 **To be continued**

* * *

…Remember Ace's cover story? :)

Okay, I know in canon Ace ran into Buggy, and as hilarious as it would've been to have Marco meet Buggy, it couldn't be. They stayed a day longer in Alabasta than Ace did, so their paths never crossed.


End file.
